First Impressions

[Lantyssa]

You wound me, Sirrah.

[Sky]

I don't get it.  Auto-scaling so content never goes gray.  A fun crafting that rely on exploration and not grind.  You can totally be self significant and play at you own pace.  The way you tried to force EQ2 to let you play is exactly how GW2 wants you to play.

It's not the game, it's me. I'm gamed out. Other than minecraft I have zero urge to play video games.

[Nebu]

It's not the game, it's me. I'm gamed out. Other than minecraft I have zero urge to play video games.

We need to game together.  We can spin yarns about the good 'ol days while grinding on baby scorpions. 

[schild]

Nebu has volunteered to babysit Sky. All in favor, say "Lumberbeard."

[Lantyssa]

Lumberbeard.

[Nebu]

Nebu has volunteered to babysit Sky. All in favor, say "Lumberbeard."

Shit.  Is it too late to withdraw?

[Ingmar]

Just make your character name AndyDavo, you'll be safe then.

[Trippy]

Nebu has volunteered to babysit Sky. All in favor, say "Lumberbeard."

Shit.  Is it too late to withdraw?

Yup, too late.

Lumberbeard.

[Sky]

Just make your character name AndyDavo, you'll be safe then.

Oh, zinger!

[murdoc]

Lumberbeard.

[tazelbain]

Lumberbeard and Doctor Muscles.

[Lantyssa]

Are they starting a band?  I'll go to a show if they'll get me a backstage pass.

[Sky]

ANIMAL LIKE DRUMMING BLAAAAAH!

[Tannhauser]

Played for two hours for my first time this morning.  Just some random notes.
1.  Character creation was good.  Good level of detail.
2.  I followed the initial event chain and it was clear and I felt it gently got me on my feet.
3.  The 'heart' events are a good idea; it pulls players together, gives rewards and feels like a part of the world.  I did four of them and they felt about the right difficulty and duration for the rewards.
4.  I made a Warrior who will use a long bow but can't find one!  Can't find one even in Divinity's Reach.  I figure I'll get one as a quest reward but I am pretty surprised how scarce weapons are.  Maybe I'm missing some NPC.
5.  Seriously, I have to hold down CTRL to reveal nodes?  Why not show on my radar?  Minor gripe.
6.  Combat is fun and I feel powerful but I wonder how I'll feel at level 60+.

So far though, a very good game.  It pushes the MMO genre forward with some of its design ideas.  Now if I could just get on :)

[KallDrexx]

5.  Seriously, I have to hold down CTRL to reveal nodes?  Why not show on my radar?  Minor gripe.

You mean crafting nodes?  If so then they do show up on the radar

[Tmon]

CTRL mostly comes in handy when you are close to a node but can't see it for some reason.

[Amaron]

I'm playing with a good size guild I've played with in other games.   Most of them really trying the game for the first time are not really showing a lot of enthusiasm for the PvE so far.   Trying to get them into WvWvW but the server situation has us all spread out at the moment.   Unfortunately the dynamic events feel a bit worse than beta as if they're being overloaded despite the zone overflows.

[Modern Angel]

There's definitely a nebulous upper limit which separates "scaled up and fun mob battle" from "mindless zerg wandering around killing events in 20 seconds" which wasn't apparent in the beta. It isn't even consistent from event to event.

[Tmon]

It was hilarious last night, one of the events in the Norn zone is to stop an invasion of the sons of sverin, the sons lasted about 2.5 seconds after they spawned in and the whole event are was carpeted with knee deep piles of their bodies.

[Der Helm]

Awesome. Now the launcher won't even start up properly. "Connection error, trying again..." (in German, which is not a good sign, since I set it to English.)

[Ingmar]

My first impressions are... not impressed. Character creation was really good, I'll give it that.

[Abelian75]

I don't really get all the crazy love this game is getting.  I mean I don't dislike it, and it's been fun-ish up to level 10, but it just feels... I dunno.  The world is so densely packed with random frantic action, but it all feels sort of soulless.  I might not notice so much if it weren't for the story quests with the voiceovers and shit, which always make me pause and think, "Oh, weird, I'm actually supposed to give two shits about this world?"

[statisticalfool]

I'm just having a lot of fatigue with the controls. You're clearly supposed to be circle strafing, occasionally hitting a dodge button, hitting 1-5 skills + 4 utility + professions, doing the AOE target dance and having a swap weapons button within reach? It feels like I'm trying to contort my hand.

I know, you can do most on-level PvE content standing still.

[Quinton]

I think my biggest complaint is the necessity to start an alt and start leveling up from zero again to try out different classes. 

The crafting system is kinda neat.  The ability to instantly stash collectable/materials in the crafting bank from anywhere is nice (and does wonders for my bag space), but I wish crafting stations were more accessible or portable.

The overall PVE gameplay is decently entertaining but not mind blowing.  The world/quests don't grab me the way TSW did -- it just feels like yet another fantasy setting.  Need to see what PVP is like.

[Ingmar]

The PVE is kind of flavorless and lame, yeah. However I just did WvW for about an hour and a half and it's pretty awesome. That's totally where the value is going to be for me, I can tell.

[Sjofn]

See, I find the PvE perfectly entertaining. It's not world changing, but I do like that I can kinda wander aimlessly and find things to do. I don't spend my time raging about my bouncy run animation like you do, though.

[ffc]

It's the exploration that makes me love the PvE.

There is a small river running through the area Tmon mentioned.  Just for kicks I jump in the river to see if it's deep.  No quest, no loot, just exploring.  That's when I notice an underwater cave!  But it's guarded by lvl 6 fish, and I'm lvl 2.  A few others from the dynamic event we just finished noticed I jumped in and followed me.  Together we killed the fish and made our way through the underwater cave.  We got out in an area with lvl 8 npcs.  When I opened the overworld map, I saw we had just cut under what looks to be impassible mountains to a higher level area that is accessible on land by going a long ways around.  This was an incredibly neat shortcut from the beginner zone which I found just by messing around.

That made me feel like the first time I ran to Neriak from Ogguk. Throw in getting xp for everything, auto-groups, skill points, vistas, etc., and I love the PvE.

[satael]

There are some nice touches here and there like a necromancer at in a shack iin the middle of the swamp. You can talk to him and he tells of a book just outside that he dares not to read (or something like that) and you can go and read it (and something happens...) The necromancer is not marked in any way so it's up to the player to bother to chat with him and actually read what he says 

[Amaron]

Well I was enjoying myself until I tried to finish the Asura map.   There's some energy crystal you have to attune to get one of the PoI's.  It has a TRULY retarded hard jumping puzzle where you have to fight mobs mid puzzle and you can be knocked off and die.   Falling means death as well if you're high enough.  Then you get to run back.

Of course if you voice your opinion that this is dumb some asshole will feel the need to say it's optional.

[Ashamanchill]

I really don't think the PvE is for me in this game. It seems to consist of nothing but Warhammer style public quests, with the same exact problems as them; when played during normal hours they get the shit zerged out of them and whatever contribution I can manage feels totally empty; or more likely for me who plays a lot at night, they have no one doing them and most of them are impossible or really tedious to do with what little people are around. This game also loves to have phases of the public quests that suddenly spawn a gang of mobs that rush whoever is nearby and gank them before they can do anything about it.

All of which sucks because I really like my classes combat.

[Venkman]

See, I find the PvE perfectly entertaining. It's not world changing, but I do like that I can kinda wander aimlessly and find things to do.

Still early for me, but I agree with this. There's a lot of "what's that around the [proverbial] corner" going on here. That combined with how much fun I'm having with the Elementalist, well, I'm doing a lot of side things just for fun. Haven't really done that since CoH (sometimes in WoW too but that was more contrived).

I like the way the map is integrated into the story/task/quest setup with the highlighted areas revealed Football-play style. I also like the whole Google Maps zoom thingy from street view through satellite. Finally, someone has moved beyond the 2D flat map that does nothing more than take over your screen.

I'm also impressed with the you're-almost-dead stuff with the four hot buttons that come up. This reminds me of some game, where you had chance to recover if you did something, but damned if I can't remember which one (mighta been an RPG or an MMO). Here it seems a bit more advanced because I have four different tools to do so.

The quest-giving cutscenes are interesting too. No awards here for quality storytelling, scripting or voice acting. But the presentation approach is also less expensive than other ways to do it, so there's a chance it's sustainable.

[KallDrexx]

Well I was enjoying myself until I tried to finish the Asura map.   There's some energy crystal you have to attune to get one of the PoI's.  It has a TRULY retarded hard jumping puzzle where you have to fight mobs mid puzzle and you can be knocked off and die.   Falling means death as well if you're high enough.  Then you get to run back.

Of course if you voice your opinion that this is dumb some asshole will feel the need to say it's optional.

Holy jesus that took me an hour and annoyed the hell out of me.  the first jumping stage (the wind area) is the hardest though.  The 2nd stage has a pretty easy shortcut from the start once you get attuned.

[Quinton]

What is it about accessibility of crafting areas in the Asuran zones?  They're stuck in those pain in the ass confusing as hell multi-level pyramids in the big city, and in the ~lv10 starting area the jewelcrafting station requires you to have to jump up a bunch of mini platforms to get up to it.  Okay, okay, arenanet you want to make me have to walk somewhere to craft for no reason I can figure out, and I can deal, but would it kill you to leave out the platforming minigame to get there?  </grumble>

[Tmon]

Inoticed in bwe 3 the Asura area seems to be really jumping puzzle heavy.  What I'm still liking the best is the ad hoc grouping, I really like not worrying about kill stealing, rushing for nodes or squabbling over chests.

[Tannhauser]

I'm playing a warrior and melee feels weaker than missile.  My gun is great single target damage and my bow is decent AoE.  But my sword and board doesn't keep me alive.  I can't dodge, my reflexes aren't the same as a crack addicted Capuchin monkey.  I do use block but there is so much shit blowing up on screen it's hard to see the mob's wind up attack.  Plus my 1h sword leap is cool, but I sometimes leap over the target and screw up my camera.  Or I leap too soon and skid in front of the mob.  Awkward.

But the polish is great.  The quality of life features are very very welcome.  You're playing the game instead of fiddling with minor crap.