This will be my personal review of the BWE that took place last weekend for GW2. I will try to be as objective as possible when describing events while interjecting my opinion and how it felt to me in italics in places. I will break this down in to sections as it will be very long.

First, what did I do? A little of everything actually. Except sleep. I did very little of that. Anyway here are the professions I played:

Elementalist ->Lvl 7

Ranger -> Lvl 10 

Engineer -> Lvl 14 

Warrior -> Lvl 8

Thief -> Lvl 10

Guardian -> Lvl 11

Mesmer -> Lvl 10 (and lots of structured pvp)

Necromancer -> Lvl 9

I unlocked every weapon skill on every profession except Elementalist.

Structured PVP: 

I did quite a bit of this, but clearly not as much as pve as you can tell by the characters I played. I played exclusively a mesmer in structured PvP, as I knew that was going to be my profession of choice for structured pvp at release and the skills I could learn now will translate to skills I can use then. Structured pvp was easy to get in to, as soon as you entered the mists (via a tab in the hero window) they put you through a brief tutorial on basics and let you tweak your character. I liked being able to try out any skill/build and see how it works, and I used this on several characters when trying to decide between 2 utilities. I would jump in the mists and see how they function before deciding if I was on the fence.

Entering the actual matches, I found the gameplay to be fun and the combat rewarding. It seemed very hard to finish people off who knew when to run and I quickly learned when to retreat. After a couple matches it reminded me a little of League of Legends in that people kinda skirmish back and forth and a victory is making them run away. Actually killing someone requires them to not know what they are doing, make a mistake (such as overextending) or you having some way of preventing them from retreating that they do not expect. (Nothing else other than that reminded me of LoL really)

So I went and changed my build to add in a stun and increase my mind wrack damage for better spike when I need it. With that I found quite a bit of success. When someone would attempt to disengage I would stun them at a key point then spike damage/mind wrack with my phantasms to finish them off. Sometimes I spiked too soon, sometimes I stunned too soon, but I was able to get a good number of kills this way and it was satisfying. Especially if I had teammates near me that were aware enough to focus them down once I had them stunned. 2 seconds is an eternity when your heal is on cooldown, your health is dwindling, and you have 2-3 players on you.

I found that when I died I felt it was clearly an error I made. I had either forgotten about abilities, got too greedy, or made some other kind of mistake. I never felt any single profession was cheap, but the really good players seemed to get the most out of their profession. Melee hurts a lot, and you want to keep those types away from you. I also found moving a lot helps tremendously and making sure you dodge at key times. However, as a mesmer, sometimes I would mirror image (create 2 clones of myself) and at that point I would many times stop moving and just start spamming the "1" skill. Many times this makes the enemy go after the "wrong" me. When I notice their attention is diverted I change up what I am doing and get ready to shatter.

my opinion: The structured pvp is fun. About as much fun as I expected. And I expected a lot. Maybe even more so, but I would need to play more to get more the swing of it. I highly recommend balanced builds and going in with some sort of control to prevent them from running, and some sort of stun break/stability buff so you can get out if you need to.

WvW:

I did not play nearly enough WvW. This will be short. This portion of the game probably interests me the most. There are a lot of cool things here, and while I could never get in to DAoC like my good friends did, I rather liked WARs rvr lakes for a while. My biggest complaint in WAR's RvR was probably the disparity in gear between people. Your mileage may vary as far as those other games go, but I just wanted to drop a bit of background on my outlook. I participated in a small group taking a supply camp, disrupting supply caravans, taking a small tower, and then a bigger group enlisting the help of some jotun/ogres and then some clashing between/in to zergs.

One thing that really stood out is that players are tough. You can get too close to the enemy zerg and not be downed immediately. There is a strange ebb and flow here, which will require more experience to really tell how much fun it is past the initial 'holy cow' stage. 

Also the lack of dedicated healers that can restore someone to full health very quickly is a big deal. When you see someone use their heal skill and you know it is on cool down, you know it is time to push them. The combination of these two saw my ranger get someone low then chase him up a hill through his zerg to finish him off, then i jumped down a hill to get away. Some were chasing me, but I was able to fall back enough to disuade most of them from pursuit and ended up in a 1v1 very fun skirmish. If their group was more aware they could have easily saved their buddy and wiped me just by knocking me down or doing some sort of cc, but being that aware in a big group is difficult. 

I can definitely see a big advantage to a group of organized people here.

opinion: I didn't play enough WvW to give an accurate opinion. I was awe struck at the first treb i saw fire near me. I had a good bit of fun. I will do much more.

PvE.

PvE is huge I am going to break this section in to 4 sections. heart/renown quests, dynamic events, meta events, and story line. 90% of the PvE I did was in a group of at least 2. There was a problem in this beta where if you tried to enter a zone, like say the lvl 1-15 starter zone from the city, and it was full it would put you in the overflow. 99% of the time it splits your party in to different overflow servers which is totally unacceptable. Devs have heard this and will fix it they say. 

It also gave you the option to enter the queue for the area which was also a bit broken. So many people were in the queue that even though the zone would open up some in moments, it would sometimes take an hour to get to you to ask if you want to enter the zone or reenter the queue. I hope this gets fixed too.

A workaround I found with my party is instead of fast traveling, we would walk up to the zone  edge all as individuals to try to leave to the area we wanted to go to. If we got lucky it would zone us in. If not, it would ask if we wanted to enter the queue, and we would click cancel. We would then walk back a few feet then try to enter again, and repeat this until we got in to the main instance of the zone. This meant it never took more than 3 minutes to get in the zone all together to adventure. However, it is a pain in the ass and simply must be fixed. Such is Beta though. 

PvE Hearts:

These are static events around the world that are always there and you can see them from the world map once you have a section of the map cleared/unlocked. You unlock map sections in large chunks, much larger than GW1. You run to a heart and most have multiple things you can do in that area that will contribute to you finishing that heart. Once it is finished, you are able to access a karma shop from the heart NPC.

There seems to be at this stage of beta some consistency issues with the hearts. Some are very quick, and others take a bit of time to finish. Some are easy and some are more difficult. Most of them, if not all, have a non combat method of advancement in addition to a combat method of advancement and that is nice.

These are solo individual quests. As you contribute to your heart, your party is contributing at a different rate. I find this to be quite out of place with the rest of the game where the design seems to highly encourage people working together. I think they tried to build this in somewhat, because occasionally I would get an increase in my progress even though I am standing around doing nothing. (and In a couple cases I was on the ground trying to rally or already defeated). The overall flow of these felt like they needed a lot of work, but they were certainly functional for a work in progress.

opinion: One of the least favorite things for me about this game prior to the weekend was the hearts. I felt they were a forced mechanic because people were not exploring the areas and ran in to the same old "oh you rescued farmer tom's crops too?" type of thing that is a pet peeve of mine in most themepark MMOs. After experiencing them first hand, at least they are all things that somewhat make sense need to always be done, and it seems like they are trying to make it a more group friendly thing. I do like that things are phased so you aren't racing other players to things. If that dam has a hole to plug I know that is a phased hole for me, and if another player goes to plug that hole, they are plugging it on their screen not mine, so I don't have to race them there. I still am not a fan of the hearts, but I can tolerate them and understand why they are there. They are a tool to direct people to different parts of the zones and then have dynamic events pop around near them.

PvE Dynamic Events:

These are the bread and butter of pve, especially for explorers. They seem to be able to pop up any time, any where, scale to the number of players, and are the main substitute for hub based questing. They function well but have some balance and consistency issues. Some are very hard and some are very easy. Personally I would like to see extremely hard ones even in low areas that chain on failure to less difficult ones etc. I hope they don't even them all out to the same difficulty, but the easy ones really are very easy. The scaling for number of players seems to need some help here. When you hit a certain threshold of players it starts to get too easy overall, but at the same time a bit too easy to get downed lightning fast. This may be because when the dynamic event spawns mobs and spawns more based on number of players it spawns them in tight groups. These tight groups of mobs tend to focus on players. 

This results in an overall easy event but players getting rolled and wondering why. This gives opportunity for other players to help revive the downed people. It is an interesting dynamic but I am willing to bet that ANet wants to change it to make it great instead of functional, kinda fun. If you have a smaller group of say 5-7 players all that seems to go away and things work out beautifully.

Many of these chain from one to the next. If you pay attention to NPCs and follow them around you can see why they are chaining, but if you are not one to NPC watch you may not realize that the event to gather dolyak meat turned in to the event to defeat the bear invasion, or why. Not knowing why isn't vital however, the swarm of bears rampaging a village is good enough to know you should jump in and kill them.

Some of these  change the landscape somewhat and they can be pretty neat. I left a small outpost in queensdale and for a long time I thought the enemy had set up a tower just down the road by a bend. 

opinion: These worked better than I anticipated, however they repeat too quickly and not enough of them have branches imho. This may be the result of me playing so many different characters in the 3 available low level zones, but this is how I feel. I truly hope that they have them turned on quick repeat for beta and are holding some back. The devs did post they are trying to limit the content in the BWE to avoid surprises. Overall I like it a lot but the events repeating so quickly was sometimes a downer. 

PvE Meta events:

These are large scale events that impact a large area and has many stages. The first one I saw was the ice shaman at the Maw. When this thing started it felt truly epic. People were running in from all over to take place and there were at least 40 people there when I showed up. It was madness, and people were dropping everywhere.  It had multiple stages and the fighting was fierce. It hit a stage where we had to close 3 portals that were guarded by a ton of baddies. We managed to do that then had the final boss fight with the shaman. For me, it involved a lot of AOE heals, bursting my heal turret, condition removing, buffing, reviving while contributing DPS. My wife during this was doing similar things but also using her glyph of renewal it insta-revive (well as insta as it can be with a cast time) 3 people at a time.

The event finally ended with victory and while it didn't seem overly 'hard' it certainly felt epic. 

opinion: This could have been the single best moment I have had in a video game. It was an awesome feeling at the end. It did make me wonder if we were close to failing, it didn't seem like it other than at the very beginning. I had a big smile on my face. Then about 25 minutes later I was walking near the same area and I saw that it started again. Like the dynamic events, this repeated way way way way too fast for me. Instantly it went from feeling very special about what i took part in to another "oh you killed him too? yeah everyone has" moment. The ride was reset for the next customers to ride. This was a rollercoaster ride, it went from feeling awesome to having that feeling nearly reversed. The event itself would have been great fun if it was an uncommon event, not something i could go back to once an hour. I really truly hope these repeat timers are cranked way down for beta.

PvE Storyline:

The story line is more of a traditional quest system where the missions/quests are instanced. Usually you have to go somewhere in the open world to a point where you can start your mission. Once you enter your mission instance people in your party can choose to join you. The story/missions you do are based on choices you made during character creation modified by the occasional choice you make during the missions.

I read about this and this was the aspect of the game I expected to like the least. I expected all choices to branch out but merge back in for key missions. Sort of like Nightfall for the original GW1. You could make a choice and that would change the next 2 missions but you would eventually merge back with the other choice on the main story line.

Especially since reading that everyone gets a chance to join one of the 3 main factions later in the story, this seemed to back up my belief and I do think they converge at that point. However, playing my storylines for my 8 characters + ones where I was in my guild mates instances I only repeated 1 mission (where the exact same choices were made). 

Each race has a choice of 3 that will impact your initial story and it's missions. For example, as a Charr you pick to be in either Blood, Ash, or Iron legion. The missions you pick are entirely seperate based on these. Halfway through the beginning chapters you make a choice, this choice affects the rest of your story. Your characters' friends can perish, you can make new friends, have a choice to gather different warband members etc. Around level 12 you get some resolution and move on to the next stage which has to do with your background you picked when you created the character.

In short, there aren't three million different missions in the story lines. but ther are a lot. The story is written as would be expected if you have read the paperback novels and understood it is a T rated game. Your character will always be heroic. Each race has it's own flavor of story that falls in line with their lore. From the Charr militaristic culture to the Norn's "be a legend" culture. They are all dramatically different and odds are you will prefer one culture and story to another. 

The missions themselves in this BWE were diverse and generally fun. There were a few that were way too easy and some that were very difficult. The devs themselves have posted they are trying to correct this. he rewards are good for these missions. Decent items, signiifcant xp etc. 

When you have people accompany you on a personal storyline, usually it is just like partying up. However, there are some missions where you are the focal point and they are limited in how they can help. For example, in one story quest my wife's character was entering this tournament and for the tournament there was an initial big brawl. When it started she was participating in the brawl but my skillbar was replaced with skills such as 'boo' that would make target enemy vulnerable, or 'cheer' which will buff your allies etc. nothing that could do damage (though I could pick up debris/litter and throw it at an enemy knocking them down). I can't recall any other game having something like this. It was very unique. But you better be quick about reading your abilities you get on the fly and processing them in your head.

Opinion: I liked this way more than I thought I would. I really liked the variety and the challenge many of these presented. Some I did not like the design, such as the closed quarters of fighting in a stairwell in the human story line. Devs have posted they want to change this. I like that others can go with you. I like the gameplay can be diverse when they do.I will want to see every storyline,and even though it is not my favorite style of writing I can appreciate it for what it is and the story was interesting enough for me. Some will say there are a lot of cliches, but really everything is a cliche anymore. I found character development to be rushed on most NPCs, and the main legendary characters (Destiny's Edge) had next to no character development. It is like they expected you to have read the novels, which is not acceptable in my mind. I hope they give more backstory on these characters for new characters by release. I have posted comments in the beta forums regarding this. 

Crafting:

I played around a little with crafting. I like crafting normally I just get bored of typical systems fairly quickly. I expected an EQ/WoW type of crafting experience here. It surpassed that. It certainly is not a hard core crafter's dream, and doesn't come close to the scope of SWG, for example, but it does pretty good.

You must find an appropriate crafting workstation to craft, which can be found relatively easily in each main city and out in the open world in several places. Once you activate the workstation the crafting window opens up and it has 2 main tabs. The first will be very familiar to you if you have crafted in most mmos. It will list all your recipes known with a (x) after it if you have the materials to craft that item, showing you have mats to make x number of that item. Once you select one and hit craft it crafts one. You can choose to craft all or select how many to craft as well. One significant thing is while it only takes a second to craft an item, each subsequent item you craft in the queue takes half the amount of time as the one previous. So the second item takes half as long as the first, the third half as long as the second etc. This makes big batches craft very very fast. No getting up for a sandwich because you have 100 wood planks to craft.

The crafting skill went up quickly as well. My armorcrafter was basically refining copper in to bronze and made a couple pieces of armor that he needed, and my skill went over 25. 

Experimentation: The other tab in the crafting window opens up the experimentation interface. In this interface you will find a list of the crafting materials in your inventory on the left, and on the right 4 empty boxes. you can drag an item from your inventory to one of the empty boxes. Let's call that item A.  At that point any other craft items in your inventory that is incompatible with item A (as in no recipe in the game uses them both together) will darken. You can then drag any other compatible item over, we will call that item B. The same thing then occurs, your inventory pane darkens anything that can not be used with items A and B. If you get 2 or more items in there, if that combination can make anything it will tell you a difficulty (you need x skill to craft) and then you can craft. Once you craft an item from this windows you learn the recipe permanently, and it will be in your recipe window.

The items are logical what to combine. As an example a simple recipe you know off the bat is leather boots. It takes a leather boot upper + leather boot sole + vial of weak blood (my memory may be off on the wording). Also there is a recipe for an insignia which may take a vial of weak blood + a bone chip. Well *spoiler alert* if you experiment with a boot upper a boot sole and that insignia you will get a new item with new bonuses and higher level requirements.

opinion: I also liked crafting more than I expected to. They built in a way to send crafting base components (they call collectibles) from your inventory anywhere in the world back to the bank, where it is held in a special tab so it doesn't take up your bank slots. No room to loot something from that DE? just clean out your inventory sending things back. or salvage things down to base components and send back. This made bag space a dream. You can also craft 20 slot bags making me wonder if I will have bag space issues ever in this game. However I wish you could tap those collectibles while at a crafting station rather than have to go to the bank and pull it all out 1 stack at a time. Crafting isn't groundbreaking but it is decent casual fun and above average for crafting in a mmo which does not revolve around crafting.

Performance:

Well they devs stated this game is not optimized yet and is cpu-bound. My pc on the cpu side is very old. Friday when the gates opened I could barely move. I decided to do some personal story to start since it is instanced, and that worked great. they must have made changes over the weekend because performance all around was great by sunday, even on my old machine. when i would get in an event with 40 people it slowed down quite a bit, and i had graphics on lowest. but in an instance i could crank up to max graphics and was amazed at the beauty of the game at that level.It is really hard to tell how this will play out until we can play on a more optimized version which won't be until much closer to release. I had my LCD display on my G13 set to cpu perfornamce and this game certainly put my cpu to the test.

Interface:

The interface was sleek and servicable. I didn't spend much time changing it around. I liked the functionality of the compass (you can right click and drag the mini map, draw on it for teammates, ping it, zoom it with mouse wheel when over it etc), but I wish I could make it a bit bigger without making the entire interface bigger. Solid. Functional. I expect more to be done here before release

Combat:

The combat at first seemed way too fast to be able to really see what is going on or make any tactical decisions. However the more I played it the more it slowed down and I could see things developing in a fight. I found control to be critical in every fight, and support when you have a group of people. You need to learn the ways your character can avoid damage, whether it is with defensive abilities or the dodge button. I liked that I was moving 97& of the time in a fight even in a team. Lining up shots, getting in position etc. Early levels you can get away with going toe to toe with an enemy but as you go against the tougher opponents that quickly becomes a way to be fighting for your life in the downed state.

Combat seemed very reactive and smooth....When in an instance... In the open world, in certain areas at certain times there was a slight delay between hitting a skill and it activating it. I read a dev post where they said they are going to try to fix that a lot before next beta and that it involved the server being hammered with stress.

opinion: It is definitely a different system one that requires you to know your abilities and when is the best time to use them, at least to take on any difficult content. And it certainly is far from the easy mode i was afraid of. Many fights gave a great feeling of satisfaction when they were done if it was against a particularly difficult foe. This is the first mmo in a long time where the combat itself in pve is very fun for me. I can think of alternate ways i could do things, ways to improve and be a better teammate/combatant, from different ways to use my control abilities to how i chose and line up my attacks to where i position myself.

I do worry that having only 5 weapon skills per weaponset will get old during the run to 80. I understand things like the engineer's and elementalist' s mechanics allowing you to have more than 5 per set, but in general the functionality of those 5 weapon buttons will never change for that weapon set. I can change weapon sets and will a lot, I just fear without a way to customize those attacks, whether by trait or swap out skills, it will eventually get a little stale. I could be wrong, I never got bored over the weekend and kept finding better uses for weaponsets and skills contained therein.

Overall Impression:

Opinion: I was very happy with the game but I can imagine many people not liking it. It still amazes me that GW2 isn't considered a niche game. Their ideas are different than what I thought was the norm of MMO players. I want to play past max level because it is fun not because I want more power/gear. I really like GW1's "end game" So I imagine I will like GW2's. I love the idea of pvp being on an even playing field from the start. The whole WvW concept intrigues me.

I don't like some things they have done such as the hearts but understand their reasoning. I found nothing that was a dealbreaker for me or anything that would become a dealbreaker. That is assuming they fix the overflow and other technical issues. 

The combat was more difficult and unforgiving than I expected. I expected them to make everything easy mode until you get to a dungeon and reserve that for the 'hardcore' who like difficult content. I found it was easy to get knocked down early on if you were not paying attention, especially when you are new to the game.

The scenery, imho, was beautiful for a game. I had no problem with the particle effects, although at the graphics settings I was playing on that may had something to do with it, there never seemed to be a bunch on the screen.

It certainly is not perfect, but it is an intriguing game that has me way more hyped for the game after I played it than before. Before it is all theory and intentions. Experiencing it's current state was like a shot in the arm, especially for someone like me that craves and loves team based tactical combat. The thing about GW2 is that at first glance it isn't easy to tell how to work as a team. It isn't as structured as other games where you have abilities that make it obvious what to do. If you stand back and just heal your buddy who is trying to stand in front of a nasty veteran mob, your buddy is gonna end up dead. you need to learn how to control while using your support buffs to help him not take damage in the first place while slowly regenning the damage he has taken. 

The feel of other players may be the most dramatic difference in this game than others, in my opinion. Due to the mechanics people always seemed helpful and pleasant. I had to remind my wife several times you can't killsteal so it is okay to help out as many people as possible and they won't be thinking 'why are you attacking MY mob?' like other games. If you ignore chat, there are a ton less asshats performing asshattery in the world. I ignore/turn off general chat so I can not comment on it's quality but I expect that it was typical for a MMO. (you can take the asshattery otu of the game but the asshats will still play....and chat)

I do wish chatting was easier esecially to local people. Chat bubbles or something. At one point my wife went afk for a couple minutes and we didn't realize it was not a safe area. We got jumped and i couldn't save her. So I stood there waiting for her to come back and a helpful soul came up and started to revive her. I tried to tell them not to since she was afk but he had no idea i was talking to him.

So in short...

TL;DR: Lots of work to do, mostly technical glitches or annoyances that needs to be cleaned up, but great start. I suspect most people will not like it's style and difficulty though.

please correct me on anything I have factually incorrect or things I may not have been aware of (like if there is a way to pull collectibles out of the bank from the craft station for example)

Long impression post but nicely formated. I read it all. Very nice. One thing I notice with your levels is that you didn't get out of starter areas. In my experience once I got into the next areas (15+) the events were more predominant and became more of a focus. 

I somewhat agree with  you about the reknown hearts but I believe they put them in there for a little bit of structure and a time filler for people. I didn't really mind them (although the completionist in me will compel me to finish all of them).

Did you explore any? One of my favorite things to do in the beta was to explore every where I could. I found some nice surprises that you would have never guessed looking on the map. I really think explorers are going to enjoy this game a lot.

Yeah I like GW2 as well.

Honestly wasn't on my radar until I played Tera. I loved the combat in that game and I came to the forums and every other post was about how GW2 was going to kill it. So I preordered the game and got into the beta. I have to say I was impressed enough to cancel my Tera sub right after.

I can see the skills being a bit repetitive howver I think this game is going to be played dynamically not traditionally from a combat standpoint. At the beginning I really hated playing because I would die so much but when I learned that you could dodge/roll it became evident that I had to keep moving and use CC's to succeed. This is where you and I will differ on weapon skills.

For instance in a traditional MMO with your abilities are fairly the same and you basically know what you have. In 2 you have to think about your weapons and know when to switch. Couple that with the fact that you only can swap out two weapons at a time and you have even more strategy in play depending on what your fighting.

I played ranger mostly and I couldn't stand my pets but then I read that you can customize them with those trait points and make them more robust dealing with the toughness stat. I was excited about that however I think the should separate the pets into classes so we can see which ones are best for tanking and dps.

I can see this being my MMO of choice and if TSW isn't up to snuff then it will be this and Rift for me. I didn't want to level to much in the game because well I hated the thought of my character being wiped so I didn't want to get to attached.

Indeed this will be a good game and I'm glad to see how they have chosen to develop it.

I only read your opinions. I too kept my expectations at bay and was seriously impressed by the game overall. I hope you gave propper feedback on the official forums, because your input is thoughtful and valuable.

Very nice post OP, i agree wth you on most points. especially the one about chat bubbles, really with they had those.

i also wasnt too hyped until AFTER i played th BWE: lol :)

on a side note to that: only played 2 games of lol since BWE and havent touched swtor or wow, so i really cant

wait for this game to go live ;)

great post, well written :)

Originally posted by DJJazzy

Long impression post but nicely formated. I read it all. Very nice. One thing I notice with your levels is that you didn't get out of starter areas. In my experience once I got into the next areas (15+) the events were more predominant and became more of a focus. 

I somewhat agree with  you about the reknown hearts but I believe they put them in there for a little bit of structure and a time filler for people. I didn't really mind them (although the completionist in me will compel me to finish all of them).

Did you explore any? One of my favorite things to do in the beta was to explore every where I could. I found some nice surprises that you would have never guessed looking on the map. I really think explorers are going to enjoy this game a lot.

Excellent observation. I did get to the next area with my engineer 14. I do wish I had explored more, because from what little I saw it looked promising. I can not comment knowledgably on those areas, it was just the one Norn area I got in to and it was only for a little bit at the end on Sunday. Next BWE. I have heard comments that the layout, DEs and feel of the second areas all were better. I will see.

Thanks for the cmment

Originally posted by Graey

Yeah I like GW2 as well.

 

Honestly wasn't on my radar until I played Tera. I loved the combat in that game and I came to the forums and every other post was about how GW2 was going to kill it. So I preordered the game and got into the beta. I have to say I was impressed enough to cancel my Tera sub right after.

I can see the skills being a bit repetitive howver I think this game is going to be played dynamically not traditionally from a combat standpoint. At the beginning I really hated playing because I would die so much but when I learned that you could dodge/roll it became evident that I had to keep moving and use CC's to succeed. This is where you and I will differ on weapon skills.

For instance in a traditional MMO with your abilities are fairly the same and you basically know what you have. In 2 you have to think about your weapons and know when to switch. Couple that with the fact that you only can swap out two weapons at a time and you have even more strategy in play depending on what your fighting.

I played ranger mostly and I couldn't stand my pets but then I read that you can customize them with those trait points and make them more robust dealing with the toughness stat. I was excited about that however I think the should separate the pets into classes so we can see which ones are best for tanking and dps.

I can see this being my MMO of choice and if TSW isn't up to snuff then it will be this and Rift for me. I didn't want to level to much in the game because well I hated the thought of my character being wiped so I didn't want to get to attached.

Indeed this will be a good game and I'm glad to see how they have chosen to develop it.

Thanks for the response,

I also have heard the argument that in most MMOs you have a ton of skills but it comes down to really only using a handfull at a time, and in gw2 you really have a lot more usefull skills to switch between. I agree with that, However, I get bored with most MMOs combat really really fast/ GW1 however, I still make a new build at least once a week and tweak it. 

Now, it is possible that my worries are unfounded and that there is enough diversity in the weapons that I won't get bored, however we can only see. Also you can change 'builds' by swapping out what weapons you have in your slots, which is nice. but still that links certain skills to each other. As you can see I am on the fence about this, and it wouldn't surprise me too much if it ended up being just fine, but I can see it getting stale for me (not the average person) if there is no way to modify the 3 skill in a greatsword of a guardian (as an example) and I will always be stuck with it if I want the #2 skill of the greatsword.

Only time will really tell.But it is a concern of mine, and I willingly admit it may end up being nothing, but felt I should voice it in a review that includes opinion.

Note also that in this event I got furthest with an engineer. Engineers can equip: pistol, shield, rifle. That is a grand total of 3 combinations of skills for the first 5 with no weapon swap. Sure you can slot utility kits to make up for this, which is why i never got bored (that + the dynamic way team combat works). But Maybe by 80 I would be bored of it. Especially if I am required to use kits in my 7-9 slots in order to diversify combat and not use elixers and turrets there.

I completely agree on most opinions. And also had a good time during the BWE

I also share worry about the skills getting a little stale. I wasnt able to unlock many of the utility skills, so that might add more to combat and tactics.

Im mostly comparing combat from my Mage in WoW. Lots of utility like Blinks, roots, pet roots, Sheeping.  You had tons of dmg abilities and utility abilites at your desposal. Im Worried that GW2 combat wont differ that much from lvl 20 to lvl 80.

Originally posted by IPolygon

I only read your opinions. I too kept my expectations at bay and was seriously impressed by the game overall. I hope you gave propper feedback on the official forums, because your input is thoughtful and valuable.

Thank you for your kind response. I had some long posts on the forums, filled out bug reports, and typed in essays in the quest/level 10 feedback often . My opinion is not any more valuable than others but I always try to see both sides of the coin.

Originally posted by WellzyC

 

I completely agree on most opinions. And also had a good time during the BWE

 

I also share worry about the skills getting a little stale. I wasnt able to unlock many of the utility skills, so that might add more to combat and tactics.

Im mostly comparing combat from my Mage in WoW. Lots of utility like Blinks, roots, pet roots, Sheeping.  You had tons of dmg abilities and utility abilites at your desposal. Im Worried that GW2 combat wont differ that much from lvl 20 to lvl 80.

 

 

We will see about variety. The nature of combat in GW2 with positioning and control piques my interest and I think would hold me for a long time even if those skills get old. We will see.

On a side note, I recommend if you want to try out utility skills to do one or both of these things:

a) go to the mists and slot them in a build and try them out

b) use the asura gate to get to other starter areas just to complete skill challenges to give more skill points

Excellent review!

I very much enjoyed daoc rvr and my ability as a runemaster to run around solo, using the terrain as cover, as would hit and run stragglers, so your account of the WvW piqued my intersest.  I will definitely be trying it out at the next opportunity as well as crafting.

I was just having too much fun running around exploring without having to constantly manage a quest log. Finding some challenging jumping puzzles also ate quite a bit into my play time.  Also unlocking weapon skills on various alts and testing out their effectiveness.

You didn't mention the auction house.  It was so easy to use I loved it.  Another example of how GW2 decided not to force you to use up a lot of your playtime traveling to auction houses and typing in names of items in your inventory.  Wherever you are in the world, you can right click an item and see what they are currently selling for in the auction.  You only have to visit an auction house to pick up bought items or pick up cash proceeds from sales.

Originally posted by angrymime

Excellent review!

I very much enjoyed daoc rvr and my ability as a runemaster to run around solo, using the terrain as cover, as would hit and run stragglers, so your account of the WvW piqued my intersest.  I will definitely be trying it out at the next opportunity as well as crafting.

I was just having too much fun running around exploring without having to constantly manage a quest log. Finding some challenging jumping puzzles also ate quite a bit into my play time.  Also unlocking weapon skills on various alts and testing out their effectiveness.

You didn't mention the auction house.  It was so easy to use I loved it.  Another example of how GW2 decided not to force you to use up a lot of your playtime traveling to auction houses and typing in names of items in your inventory.  Wherever you are in the world, you can right click an item and see what they are currently selling for in the auction.  You only have to visit an auction house to pick up bought items or pick up cash proceeds from sales.

 

I indeed failed to mention the trading post and it's incredible ease of use, it's accessibility from nearly anywhere and many of it's intuitive features that makes it so fantastic. I found it to be a fantastic resource for me in game. You would not think a game that sells extra bag space in the cash shop would make it so easy to manage your inventory. Even in the field it is quite easy to manage your inventory.

Thank you for your long and elaborate thread, I enjoyed it a lot :)

You gave a nice overview and explained very well all important mechanics (as well as the difference between hearts and DEs). Finally, I liked your approach to write down your expectations and where those were met or even exceeded.