June 8th beta weekend

[Zetor]

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)

[Modern Angel]

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

[Sky]

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.

[Dark_MadMax]

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

[Threash]

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.

[Tyrnan]

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

From ArenaNet blog:

[LK]

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.

[Maledict]

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

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.

[Tyrnan]

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.

[Spiff]

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.

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 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)

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  ).

[Hawkbit]

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.

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. 

[kildorn]

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.

[Kageru]

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.

[Cadaverine]

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. 

[kildorn]

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.

[Kageru]

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.

[Dark_MadMax]

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 :(

[Furiously]

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.

[satael]

-I thought the graphics in gw2 look nice (some pics I took in this bwe 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...

[Threash]

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

[kildorn]

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)

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[Crumbs]

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?

[Dark_MadMax]

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

[Furiously]

I agree WvWvW needs some sort of stickyness.

[Segoris]

-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:

[Ginaz]

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 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.

[kildorn]

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.

[Furiously]

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

[kildorn]

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.

[Sky]

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   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.

[Threash]

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.

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.

[Draegan]

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.

[Threash]

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

[Draegan]

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.