I've been playing for a good chunk of the day now, but at the moment I don't really feel the need to login anymore. (Which doesn't have to mean much because I am not a real beta fan anyway: working on a character you can't keep is a huge detractor for me, yet, the gameplay by itself isn't so addicting that it makes me feel that I can't let go).

So here's my reviewette:

The good stuff:

- Very immersive surroundings, especially some of the cities: lively and rich.

- High amount of artistic skill went into this game: from character art to the UI: top job.

- Very good music

- Performance: better than I had expected, (seeing how there's still huge steps to make in optimization).

- Loading screens don't take so long: much less of an impact to immersion as SWTOR's planet change sequences, to give an example.

The ok stuff:

- Graphics: great level of detail but textures are not as crisp as you'd really want. Maybe this will still improve.

- Dynamic events do a good job at making the world feel more alive but aren't the revolution in the actual questing experience that some people might have expected.

- Combat: I'm kind of mixed up in this: on the one hand I like the system, unlocking a weapon set's abilities fairly quickly and weapon swapping to have access to a different range of skills. On the other hand, each weapon set has a limited amount of abilities yet each set has its core viability skills: it must be useful also on its own. That doesn't leave so very much skills open for very situational abilities like silences, stun breakers, etc. i.e. the kind of skills which seperate the best from the rest in most mmorpgs. All in all combat didn't feel very tactical to me, a bit spammy even, but it's low level gameplay so it's unfair to take that as an overall conclusion.

Unknowns:

- PVP: only did WvW for 20 minutes or so; there wasn't much going on; escorted a Dolyak, got killed a few times trying to solo an objective but I can't really comment on this yet.

- Edit: Crafting: didn't try this yet. Tried to equip a pick axe when I found some copper ore but didn't work V_V

- edit: Dungeons: didn't get to do this yet.

Things I disliked:

- Camera control: only a short zoom range, I would like to zoom out a lot further.

- Movement: felt a bit weird: as if your character is slightly ahead of the point where you actually make it move and turn. Hard to explain this but it felt a bit like controlling a puppet on strings, if you know what I mean. This might become less of an issue when you grow more accustomed to it.

- Fighting to survive: in many cases you already know it's in vain: would be great to have an option to skip it and teleport right away.

- Walking. Yeah, you can teleport to every location you discovered but it's leggity-leg-it! for anything else. The distances aren't so great that it becomes very annoying but I still think that mounts or other means of real-time transport, would be a great addition after playing the game, especially for immersion sake.

- Death penalty: never really felt annoying. Because there is no trinity and there's only so much self-healing that can be done, dying is part of the core gameplay and it will happen often. I understand that the best way to make people really frustrated, really fast, would be implementing steeper death penalties, still, the lack of penalties apart from a repair bill kind of makes dying a non-issue like any other game doing the same thing. Avoiding death did not feel like something of paramount importance.

Overal conclusions:

GW2 wraps many features and aspects of mmorpgs in a new style of paper, but when you unpack them it still kind of feels like "the same game". Presenting the same old gameplay elements differently didn't make it escape its very deep themepark roots.

Fans of this part of the genre will feel right at home but I can also imagine many people feeling disappointed about the fact that the game still sits so close to what they are very accustomed to by now. I'm more in the latter category but I don't feel very disappointed because my expectations weren't very high to begin with.

It feels like GW2's innovation is mainly invested in doing things seemingly different rather than doing actually different things, if you catch my drift. And in some cases doing things actually differently also has its drawbacks;

- On the one hand there's great innovation in dynamic events, doing away with questgivers and adding life to the world, but on the other hand they actually make zones feel more themeparkish with dedicated "rides" at dedicated, clearly marked places ("Gota catch 'em all!").

- On the one hand there's amazingly immersive cities, but on the other hand your place and story in them are very much "on rails", story conversations are like watching a poorly rehersed street theatre performance and the story itself is cookie cutter fantasy cliché, written "for all ages", i.e. not wanting to lose 11 year old Timmy's attention.

An example: being called "The hero of Shaemoor!" in the first ten minutes made me facepalm and having no choice but to betray a bandit leader to the authorities in the first part of the personal story didn't reflect what I wanted my character to do at all. ("WTF Friggin Judas! Why did you tattertale!") This despite me picking the non-heroesque "street urchin" background at character creation. What I saw of it reminded me very much of AoC's way of presenting story, and about the same level of writing. Story and writing is probably the one aspect where STWOR blows GW2 out of the water, but that isn't so surprising.

- On the one hand there's the doing away with the trinity, (you could call this a true innovation) but on the other hand this makes group combat kind of an egoistical experience where you only truly assist eachother in reviving, but not during combat itself. This + the "participate at will" aspect of dynamic events makes communication between groups of players much less needed. I only experienced people giving eachother directions in one single event, the rest was 6-15 people doing the same, perfectly understandable tasks in a dedicated areas without speaking a word.

The redeeming aspect here is that a lot of these events can be considered leveling content: there's no need to communicate in that kind of content in other games either. So in GW2 you'll be doing single player quests together, but the fact that you are together doesn't mean it's a much more social experience.

Bottom line:

All in all GW2 sets industry benchmarks in the immersion, artwork and music departments, but sadly those are confined to a freshly painted yet typical fantasy themepark formula with core gameplay elements that didn't do much to draw me in deeper.

edit: This was based on just one day of playing. That's a pitifull amount of exposure to judge a mmorpg on, so don't take my opinions and impressions as facts. If I would have played it much longer, no doubt my opinions would have been different in some areas, for better or for worse.

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Originally posted by Distopia
IN-depth objective impression, kudos on that. My main concern right now is how this actiony combat lends itself to cordination between allied guilds (not in voice chat), is it so actiony that that would be impossible, or is it something that wouldn't really have an adverse effect on that?

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In my opinion coordination will come as people become more skilled. I got to the idea that many people didn't read any of the skills' descriptions and simply spammed away without thought.

Originally posted by Distopia
IN-depth objective impression, kudos on that. My main concern right now is how this actiony combat lends itself to cordination between allied guilds (not in voice chat), is it so actiony that that would be impossible, or is it something that wouldn't really have an adverse effect on that?

Thanks, Disto (and others too!)

I'm not sure about that, really. I didn't participate in sieges if that is what you mean. I think you might see guilds having dedicated "revival" medics and dedicated siege weapon operators though, as well as a ranged AoE brigade, but that's about all I expect. In large group PVE it doesn't seem that this game requires the amount of specialism and clever role distribution like in WOW's raiding to give an example (logically).

There's one thing preventing truly massive player events of whatever nature: zone caps; kind of sucky to have half your alliance or guild trapped in the overflow server or in a queue. (I should have added that in the dislike section as a matter of fact).

The skills bar is really killing it for me, the PvP zone raises you to 80 so you can be on even standing with other players--so I got a glimpse at what end game would be like. It's nice that you can quickly alternate between your slot skills, but I would much rather just have several bars with all of them already hotkeyed. I feel like I'm restricted by my weapon rather than liberated by it--the 5 skills are . . . well very unconventional in most classes, and like you said leads to a spammy kind of feel. And the lack of chatter made me drop the game this morning, yesterday I was into the game just because so many new things were thrown at my face, but today I found myself not enjoying myself (contradicting a post I put up earlier today). People say this is because it's the first beta and will get better with time, but I see no reason for it to--and I'm almost positive Local chat is not a zone chat, so that hinders the game even further. I pray that something is done about the lack of socializing.

DP regarding your point about people playing together but not with each other during DE is something that was brought up by a lot of players before release. But they were told repeatedly by fans that GW2 DE'S are not like RIFT, They are more complex in nature which will encourage teamwork and that people would infact communicate more.

So i am guessing that is not the case? it is like Rift where people come out of bushes to close rifts, jump around like silent bobbing heads and disappear once again, moment rifts were closed? if yes... i am really disappointed with this since that  is not what i call playing and co operating with other players.

@DP

So by this quote.....

It feels like GW2's innovation is mainly invested in doing things seemingly different rather than doing actually different things, if you catch my drift. And in some cases doing things actually differently also has its drawbacks;

Are you saying they spent more energy on not being WoW than on defining their own game?

I hate forced grouping but some grouping adds an (for me occasional) social aspect. I was not in one grp through level 20 so far. Operating AROUND folks and plenty of rezs given and received (for the Champion fights) but all done in almost an eerie silence (figuratively of course)

I am not really huge on grouping but this seems 'off' for an MMO, to me at least.

Originally posted by Digna

I hate forced grouping but some grouping adds an (for me occasional) social aspect. I was not in one grp through level 20 so far. Operating AROUND folks and plenty of rezs given and received (for the Champion fights) but all done in almost an eerie silence (figuratively of course)

 

I am not really huge on grouping but this seems 'off' for an MMO, to me at least.

Nothing is stopping you from grouping.

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

@DP

So by this quote.....

It feels like GW2's innovation is mainly invested in doing things seemingly different rather than doing actually different things, if you catch my drift. And in some cases doing things actually differently also has its drawbacks;

 

Are you saying they spent more energy on not being WoW than on defining their own game?

I think so. But the crazy thing I don't get is they already had a recipe to expand on. GW2 is a beautiful world, they got that part right. It is the inconsistency of throwing a bunch of stuff into the pot with that beautiful world that makes it feel just slightly odd. Maybe as you say, they have tried too hard not being WoW or even crazier not being themselves aka GW1.

This echoes pretty much how I am feeling about this game. I'm gonna glom onto your thread, Pony if you don't mind since I really don't feel like creating my own impressions thread hehe.

I will say that this is a damn good game and very well made. I will definitely buy it when it drops down in price (just like the original GW).

That said, it feels like SWTOR all over again but with a different genre as the cornerstone. Bear with me, I'll explain.

SWTOR felt like a standard themepark with a deep single player storyline as its hook. The fully voiced personal story with choices was its main selling point. For what it was, it was a fun run for a few months.

GW2 feels the same way to me. But instead of the srpg focus, its like taking a standard themepark and throwing in an action game. It is a very well made action game. The combat is deep and rewarding, the vehicles to partake in said combat is fun and fits perfectly.

Unfortunately, much like SWTOR, this is not why I got into MMORPGS. If I want to play a sprpg, I will go play one. If I want to play an action game, I'll fire up Devil May Cry or God of War. When I want to play an mmorpg, I don't want an online version of another genre. I want the virtual worlds that got me hooked on this genre in the first place. I want crafting, economy, non combat classes, game systems fully fleshed out that don't involve killing things.

Anet made a rich, vibrant, highly detailed, beautifully orchestrated game to kill stuff in. Unfortunately, I didn't get into MMORPGS because I wanted to kill stuff for the 1 millionth time. I've been playing video games for 30+ years and when MMOs first came on the scene, it was a breath of fresh air to play a game that focused on building a virtual world with all the subtle nuances that come with it.

I know thats not the point of this game. Which many of its defenders will point out. I'm just giving my point of view. Great action game, just like swtor was a great rpg.

I don't post on this site all that much, but I've come to respect your posts Dark Pony.

I remember being massively hyped about SWTOR and watching The Republic show for like 6 months before the game came out.  Had a good ride to 50 and then felt barren with all the poor judgements made in the game design.

I've played my share of mmo's and after Warhammer, AoC and now SWTOR I will not fall into the hype wagon for an mmo anymore.

I've been very reserved about GW 2 among the rampant fanboyism.  I would say GW 2's following is even more crazed than SWTOR's was and I think alot of people are setting themselves up for disappointment.

I've kept my eye on the game and it does like quite beautiful, but beauty is only skin deep.  I have noticed in videos how the combat doesn't look quite right.  You mention feeling like a puppet and that boils down to the responsiveness of the character to your input commands and the animations of each character action.

I've also felt this whole weapon system is just a way to cut down on the number of skills they had to create this time around.

Honestly after playing each class and killing SK in the D3 open beta I am fricking PUMPED for that game.  I'll keep my eye on GW 2 when it lauches and see what people have to say after the first week or 2 before considering whether I'll buy the game or not.

Good review.

Great reviewette, Pony.  Thank you.  It felt objective and fair, although I didn't agree with ALL of it, I did agree with MOST of it.  For me, GW2 will be my next "great MMO" that I intend to play long term.  It's been a while since I've had one of those and I like it enough for it to take that place in my gaming life. :)  So my views are going to be a bit more positive in some aspects, but all in all I felt like your review was fair.

Crafting, by the way.....I found to be a lot of fun, and no one has really mentioned it yet.  I became a tailor and artificer.  Have done a bit of the tailoring, not much artificing yet.  I really want to try the guardian before I do more crafting so I might not get to do any more at this rate with the servers being down and what not.

Anyway....thanks for doing that write up.  Very cool!

Originally posted by Emwyn

Originally posted by GeezerGamer

@DP

So by this quote.....

It feels like GW2's innovation is mainly invested in doing things seemingly different rather than doing actually different things, if you catch my drift. And in some cases doing things actually differently also has its drawbacks;

 

Are you saying they spent more energy on not being WoW than on defining their own game?

I think so. But the crazy thing I don't get is they already had a recipe to expand on. GW2 is a beautiful world, they got that part right. It is the inconsistency of throwing a bunch of stuff into the pot with that beautiful world that makes it feel just slightly odd. Maybe as you say, they have tried too hard not being WoW or even crazier not being themselves aka GW1.

I agree a lot with both statements. It rings true for many aspects. At least they did a lot of effort to reinvent the wheel in many aspects. But for others it's more like they had some great ideas to improve on GW1 but didn't went all the way with them. The result is a game that wants to be different but is held back by some conventions; A hugely immersive, dynamic, open world concept yet still hampered in openness and immersion by overflow servers, bread crumbing and teleporting as the only means of fast transport, to give one example.