[BetaWar]

Not sure how many people have been following the game up to this point, but there is a beta weekend starting in about 4 hours (at noon PDT). Who is going to be a part of it? Who has preordered the game? And what server (world) are you planning on joining? And, finally, what class(es) are you most excited about playing?

I am personally going to be part of it, I preordered the game the first day it was available and can't wait for it to come out (though a beta opportunity is nice too). I am also going to join the Darkhaven US server. I haven't come up with a beta character name yet, but I'll come up with something. I am personally looking forward to playing the Guardian, Ele, and Mesmer the most (probably in that order as well).

If anyone else is going to be part of the beta we should try and meet up at some point and have a DIC in GW2 playtime

[BenignDesign]

I want this so badly it almost makes me cry.

It is for that reason I must abstain from the beta and the game.

My children wandered lost for years as mommy busted ass on the original GW campaigns. I can't orphan them again for GW2.

[BetaWar]

But they're older now, they should be self-sufficient by now right?

[Kilorn]

I'm leaving work early today so that I can be home by 3pm when the beta starts. I've been waiting for this game since ArenaNet announced it. I'll be on Sea of Sorrows under the name Kilorn, so feel free to contact me if you're in there.

[DarenR]

I have all the others and I have never finished any of them....

in other news diablo3 may 15

[WolfCoder]

BetaWar, on 27 April 2012 - 09:20 AM, said:

But they're older now, they should be self-sufficient by now right?

Have them join you, even! It's always good to have loyal minions about.

[BetaWar]

Well, now that the beta is done (for this weekend at least), what did people think? I have a rather lengthy write-up (currently in progress), but here is what I have so far:

Spoiler

GuildWars 2 Open Beta Weekend 1

Specs:
The first thing that a lot of people will be asking about is what hardware specifications the system, or systems, I played on have. This time around I played on both a desktop and a laptop. Below are the relevant specifications for each.

Laptop hardware:
Processor: Inter Core i5-2430M CPU @ 2.40 GHz 2.40 GHz
RAM: 8 GB
Graphics Card: Integrated
Screen size: 17 inches
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
OS: Windows 7

Desktop hardware:
Processor: FIXME
RAM: 6 GB
Graphics Card: FIXME
Screen size: 24 inches
Resolution: 1920 x 1080
OS: Windows 7

Graphics:
I have to say that I was quite impressed with the game graphics demonstrated in the beta, and for the few minutes I played at highest graphical settings the game looked amazing. However, I quickly found that even on my desktop machine high graphics mode caused lag, while it wasn’t bad it also detracted from the gameplay (as such I moved the graphics settings back to the balanced mode).

The main gameplay goes with pseudo-realism, which is nice and takes after the graphics style we all know and loved in the first GuildWars games. However, they also went for a secondary, slightly cartoony, painted feeling. This is most forthright in the character creation screen, the cutscenes, map, and GUI windows. At first I was reserved on the graphics style, I am not typically a fan of cartoony, pastel, or painted graphic styles. However, I must say that I was quite happy with everything graphically-speaking, the UI flowed nicely together and it all just seemed to work.

Gameplay:
Unlike the rest of the GuildWars series, GuildWars 2 has brought about a number of changes to the gameplay. It is now a significantly faster paced game which is both an improvement and a hindrance at the same time. You may be wondering why I call is a dual-edged sword? Well, it comes down to two things: first, I know a few people who weren’t able to get into the original series because the gameplay was too slow-paced for them and had trouble keeping their interest. I no longer think this will be a problem as there were portions of the beta which was almost pure chaos (in a good way, at least from my perspective). However, it is also a hindrance because we no longer have the opportunity to plan out a strategy prior to engaging an enemy of group of enemies. Things happen considerably faster in GuildWars 2: enemies are constantly spawning, players are constantly coming into and out of you screen range, fights between humans and enemies are almost always happening, events are being triggered (and finishing, and progressing all around you), things are changing. On top of that, it appears (at least from what I played) that the spells (consecrations and AOEs) don’t last a significant enough amount of time to be of great use; but more on that later.

When a character is killed, or downed as it is now referred to in GuildWars 2, offers a new way to die in gaming (at least from what I have seen). If you run out of health you are downed, but being downed doesn’t mean you are out of the fight. In fact it means quite the opposite. While downed you are allowed to use 4 skills depending on the class you are playing. If you manage to kill an enemy while being downed you rally, which is a fancy way of saying you come back to life with a fraction of your full health. If you are finished off while being downed you go into defeated mode which offers you only two options: either traveling to a waypoint and resurrecting there, or waiting for a player/ NPC to come along and revive you. Either way you are back in the game with a death penalty and damaged armor (which is less effective).

Is the different gameplay choices a good or a bad thing? I can’t really say either way on this one, as everyone’s opinions will differ. I however believe that the improvement outweighs the downside of the new game, especially as balancing takes place and things change during development. The fast paced world that is GuildWars 2 is a fun, fresh new way of doing things where grinding is discouraged and questing takes on a life of its own.

Controls:
The controls are considerably different than the original GuildWars series as well. Instead of using the mouse to move, attack, talk, and otherwise interact with the world (and having the 1-8 keys to use skills) you have the mouse around mainly for camera control and AOE spell placement (where applicable). For movement you have to use the QWEASD keys (where Q and E are strafes, W is forward, S is backwards, A and D are turn left and turn right respectively), or the arrow keys (at which point you have forward, backwards, and strafes by default). The skill usage keys are also slightly different (though much the same). Now you have 1 through 5 as weapon skills (where 1 through 3 are based on your single-handed weapon and 4 and 5 are based on your offhand weapon; however, if you are using a two-handed weapon all five skill slots are based on the single weapon). The 6th skill is your heal skill, each class has a few healing skills to choose from. The 7th, 8th, and 9th skill slots are for your choice of skills, which have to be unlocked with skill points, and the 0th skill slot is for an elite skill. Then, based on class you will have a function key or two which change certain aspects of your gameplay. For example the Elementalist can change between the four elements using F1 through F4.

This may seem like a lot of skills to choose from, but GuildWars 2 does a great job of making the choices not feel overwhelming (and I actually count this as a negative given the freedom that the original GuildWars series had). You start off with only your first weapon skill and your healing skill unlocked. Then, as you kill enemies you unlock weapon skills, this gives you five skills if you use a single weapon set for a little bit. At level 5 you unlock your first free-choice skill slot (the 7th skill slot) and have to choose whether or not to purchase a skill using the skill point you just acquired. There are approximately 21 skills which you can choose between these three skill slots, and they cost a varying number of skill points (ranging between 1 and 7 skill points for a single Guardian skill). At this point on you gain a single skill point per level. However, there are other ways to acquire skill points hidden around the world that come down to challenges ranging from using an item, to killing a boss type enemy, to doing some simple training. At level 7 you unlock the ability to use a second weapon set,, and using the tilde key (~) you can quickly swap between your weapon sets. At level 10 you unlock the 8th skill slot, at level 20 you unlock the 9th skill slot, and finally at level 30 you unlock the 0th skill slot along with the ability to purchase elite skills using skill points (which are reported to cost up to 25 skill points).

There was also the addition of a z-axis in GuildWars 2 which allows you to jump and swim (as well as allowing flying enemies). This brings a new level of immersion to the combat system that is refreshing and nice to see GuildWars catching up to many other MMOs out there. The griffins for instance are no longer grounded, and can soar into the skies for attacking you or running. Harpies also now have the ability to fly, and bats use their flight to evade your attacks more easily. While you are swimming combat doesn’t stop, in fact it simply takes to the waters. When equipping a character it is important to remember and have a trident or spear for underwater usage. They combat there is interesting and uses the z-axis with great effectiveness. The combat is just as fast paced as it was on ground, but it appears that the development and artistic teams took the time to make underwater combat as beautiful as they could. You will often see attacks lighting up the waters and streams of light zooming past you towards a target or possibly just going stray (as you will see players do have a tendency to unleash an attack without a specified target). There are also a number of underwater villages which can hold events making the underwater landscape just as worth exploring as the land based world.

Now, how does this all feel? Well, it feels restricted; as it should considering that it is restricted. However, it causes you to barely notice when you actually unlock a new skill slot. You don’t feel that you have accomplished a ton and the reward of getting to level 20 really didn’t feel as though it matched the amount of work required to get there. Given their current model that has you not earning skill points until level five it may work out, but it is also a bit underwhelming as a whole. They default key layout is a little cramped, but that isn’t too bad once you get used to the key layout and needing to constantly move between them. I did find that a few times I accidentally hit the ESC key instead of the tilde, which caused the game menu to open, but that wasn’t terribly major.

Character Traits:
Also on level eleven you earn the right to start placing trait points on traits which improve character skills or slots; well, that is assuming you purchase the training for traits from a class appropriate trainer. By the time you place five traits in a single trait line you get a nice perk along the same lines as the line you have been investing in. By the time you reach ten points in a line and you unlock a trait slot allowing you to select a trait to further modify your skills.

One instance is the Guardian virtue line which allows you, with ten points in the line, to modify your concentrations to last longer, or recharge faster, or be ground-targeted (instead of being placed at your current location you get to choose where they go). There are a number of other things you can modify in this tree as well, but that is the gist of it.

Classes:
Given the limited time to play through the beta and the amount of content available for viewing I wasn’t able to play through all the classes (remember, there are eight – 8 – classes in total). However, I was able to play a couple of them, mainly the Guardian and Elementalist. Here’s what I thought.

Elementalist:
I only played the Elementalist for a little bit and there I was unable to find much or interest in that time limit. That being said, I only wound up getting her to level 3 before having to call it quits for the beta weekend and return to reality of work and class. The weapon skills go through the basics of each of the four elements (fire, water, air, and earth) however you have to unlock the four locked skill slots for each of the attunements and only have fire and water available at level 1. In general you get elemental style spells and are able to cast them to harm enemies or energize allies.

This isn’t to say that Elementalists are just the run of the mill spell casters from other games. In fact they are quite different from what I was expecting the play style to be. First, certain skills have different effects based on your current attunement. For instance, your healing skill only actually regenerates/ heals health when you are attuned to water. Otherwise it applies boons to you. Given the limited amount I played the Elementalist I can’t go into too much more detail about them, however they do look promising at least when attuned to fire. It is also of note that you don’t have any magic levels, so you don’t have to worry about watching yet another gauge. Instead, you just have to wait until your skills recharge and you can cast them again right away. This is a nice, new way, to go about the standard spell casting classes with a twist.

Guardian:
The Guardian is the class I played for the majority of the beta weekend, and I wound up getting him leveled to 22 in the two and a half short days the beta was available. Overall I must say that the Guardian was more fun to play than the Elementalist was (at least given my play style at the time). The Guardian is what is typically referred to as a Paladin. You go around using holy weapons skills to heal allies, summon ethereal weapons to help defend you, and consecrate the ground on which you walk (creating zones with effects ranging from healing and granting protection, to reflecting projectiles back at their sender).

The Guardians also have the ability to use scepters or melee weapons (scepters offer you a ranged series of attacks; however they do appear to be less powerful than the melee weapons). I found that may preferred weapon set was a mace and shield, though I had a hammer equipped under my secondary weapon set which offered me a number of quick, smaller attacks with the mace and throw up a shield to push enemies away from me. Then I was able to quickly change over to the hammer and put up a defensive circle which kept enemies away for a short period of time, as well as dish out some heavy hits quickly.

I also unlocked all three of the custom skill slots which I equipped a few consecrations to (and later augmented with the trait to target the ground when casting them). It turned out to be a nice little combination which was capable of defending against projectile attacks, burning enemies within a proximity, and healing (and granting protection) to allies within the final circle. This, in conjunction with the hammer and shield weapon skills allowed for blocking enemy progress and pushing enemies away from cast positions.

From experience I can say that a good Guardian with well-placed consecrations can turn the tide of a battle. A wall of reflection can cripple archers, and a ring of warding can block the progress of melee enemies leaving the foes open to ranged attack and spell casters to quickly deal with the trapped baddies. Alternatively, if you can cast the shield of absorption, swap weapon sets, and follow with ring of warding.

You could also choose to go another direction and build a Guardian with support based shouts to apply boons to allies in the area, or use signets to gain passive buffs and apply boons as needed (or resurrect an ally if you so choose). In all, the Guardian offers a lot of good gameplay options which I am looking forward to playing more of in the future. It is definitely a class I would recommend to anyone interested in being able to play a well-rounded character; though this isn’t to say that other classes are unable to provide just as rounded gameplay. That I will have to look into as the betas continue.

Races:
While GuildWars 2 allows you to play as multiple different races (instead of just Human like GuildWars 1) I only played on Human characters during this beta event.

Humans:
Humans are much as you would expect, they have been beaten down badly since the original series. Ascalon has fallen to the Charr, and then been taken by the dead thanks to the sacrifices made by those remaining Ascalonians. However, humanity hasn’t fallen by the wayside; instead they have gathered around Lions Arch and Divinity’s Reach as their strongholds and spread out from there. The gods have remained silent to their pleas, but they have faith which unites humanity and keeps them strong.

Event System:
The events are a quite interesting new aspect to the game. As you are wandering around the vast world you may come upon a city or output or simply a farmland and an event nearby message will pop up on your screen alerting you that there is something of possible interest around you. If you travel towards the event you will have the choice of joining in on it or simply walking onwards. Say you wanted to join in the event, well that is as easy to do as going up and killing the enemy or protecting the caravan or doing whatever else the event is asking of you along with the rest of the players around. At the end of the event you are rewarded based on your participation (even if you just kill a single enemy you will be rewarded). The act of joining an event also increases the event’s difficulty as necessary based on the number of players currently active in the event. For instance, if there are a lot of players participating in an event then the enemies will become more numerous and even stronger (gaining levels). When being rewarded you are given an amount of experience, karma, and money based on the amount you contributed to the goal of the event.

I was actually quite happy with the event system. It ran smoothly, often flowing from one event to another in the chain quickly and always offering something to do with your playtime. Furthermore, there were times when multiple events would take place at the same time fairly close to each other giving you the opportunity to choose between which event you wanted to play through and offering variety in the enemies encountered in events thanks to cross-overs between the events. The events also make grinding ill-advised. Instead of simply wandering around and killing enemies because you need to level up you play events and get a larger sum of experience in the end plus get to have more fun while doing it. I am personally very excited to see what additional events the developers are working on that haven’t been released in this beta and hope that there will be an even wider variety of things to do when the game comes out.

Quests:
The quests aren’t quests in their general sense and are instead more like missions. You get instanced areas to go through and complete goals (much like the original GuildWars series) you are even able to take party members along on an instanced quest with you (though it doesn’t appear that they get credit for completing the instance unless they are the ones who starts it). Upon completing most instances you get the choice between one or more items to be awarded as well as experience and other goodies.

My only complaint about the quests in the beta was that I was unable to determine if they were going anywhere on a main quest line, or simply moving the personal story line along. It would be nice to have some way to determine which the instances were actually working towards. As always, it is quite possible that they weren’t testing the main quest line in the beta weekend which would make sense as to why the instances didn’t feel like it was leading anywhere terribly important.

World:


Persistence:


Things to change:
As with every beta, there are things that need to be changed, and things that people feel should be changed. Here is my list of things I would love to see changed before the game launches and why.

Quests

Consecrations

AOE

Healing Breeze

Districts

Skill Diversity
11 weapon skills sets (sword, mace, or scepter AND shield, focus, or torch OR hammer, or great sword)
4 healing skill choices
Approx. 21 choose 3 free skill slots
Approx. 5 elite skill choices
Leads to 11 * 4 * (21 choose 3) * 5 possible builds, or 292600 possible builds for the Guardian.

This may sound like a large number, but when you look at GuildWars 1, each class had

Customizable UI



Overall Rating:

[BetaWar]

For anyone still paying attention to GW2, I am excited to announce the final beta weekend, and the launch date of the game.

Our last beta weekend will take place July 20nd - 22nd.
The game will release on August 28th.

Let the girlish squeels begin

[Kilorn]

Yea, I saw that on Twitter yesterday and I'm incredibly excited. Unfortunately the release date is like 3 days before my current lease runs out and the wife and I are moving away from this crappy apartment complex during that time. At least I'll get to play a couple days in the head start period. Just gotta make sure we complete the move fast so we can get to gaming!

[BetaWar]

Well, let us try to get some sort of a discussion started here.

Based on what people have seen between the beta weekends and the stress tests (there have been two of each at this point), what would you like to see changed? What is driving you up the wall? What do you absolutely love? What are you hoping to see in the final game?

I personally think that the skill system needs to change quite a bit (I placed this on the suggestions forum during the previous beta weekend, though it didn't get any replies that I saw). At the moment they are using a tiered system, where you have to purchase x skills in each tier to unlock the next one. I think that a skill tree system would work significantly better. Start off with some low level skills and work your way down to more powerful ones like Diablo 2's system. They could also make a different tree for each of the trait lines, which would be interesting and give you an easy way to figure out which traits will change which skills.

I would also like to see a larger number of skills available to the majority of classes. At the moment the elementalists have by far the largest number of skills (around 27 per attunement and 4 of those, making for about 104 skills in total -- in comparison with the ~27 of the rest of the classes). They should bring back some of what made the classes unique and interesting from GW1, such as Conjure Phantasm, for the Mesmer.

Now if you played the finale in the second beta weekend, you likely ran into the giant corrupted devourer (level 80, in a 5-20 area). I am uncertain if they plan on allowing this type of thing in the actual game, but if they do they are going to need to not auto-reduce player levels while facing such enemies. I was level 35 at the time (14 by auto-leveling) and dealt only 0s to it. Don't get me wrong, they likely did it on purpose and it was a lot of fun to run around playing the finale, but having something that was unwinnable isn't the most fun.

Other than that I think that the weapons need to have a larger number of skills each (such as 5 skills for the sword and 5 for the shield, and 10 for two-handed weapons such that you can select from different skills to make your weapon builds and have higher variation in builds.

Skills need to be better balanced as well. For instance, the Guardian skill Sanctuary, which is supposed to be a protective barrier for anyone within only has the radius of 120, and many melee attacks have 130 for range (meaning you can still get hit if the melee character places themselves properly).

[GWatt]

In no real order:

• cons
  
  • downward level adjustment
    
  • item damage
    
  • skill tiers & how skill points are earned
    
  • No more multi classing
  
  
• pros
  
  • open world
    
  • ability system
    
  • world events
    
  • mobile combat
    
  • character customization

Even though I said I disliked the skill tiers, I really like the ability system overall. I like that your weapon determines half of your abilities. I also like that the number of abilities you can have equipped at any given time is small. However, I do really hate how skill points are earned. You have to walk to random places and do a mini-quest and you get a skill point. As far as I know there is no other way to gain skill points.

For people not familiar with the original guild wars, you picked a primary profession(class in other games) at character creation and then during the game you could have any other profession as a secondary. You gained the skills and non-primary attributes of your secondary allowing for great flexibility. I'm sad to see it go.

The mobile combat is great. Not only are almost all of your abilities able to be used on the run, but you can actually have your character do rolls to avoid incoming damage.

One thing I'm not sure if I like is the loss of dedicated support. I know that everyone is now forced to have a heal and that several, if not all, classes have party support skills. However, I really did like playing my monk and keeping everyone alive.

@BetaWar: how is Conjure Phantasm a uniquely mesmer skill? It's nowhere near as awesome as psychic instability, panic (both of which are admittedly elites,) arcane conundrum, or clumsiness.