So I pre-ordered the game a bit ago, after the 3rd beta weekend, so I never got to play in those weekends.

I hoped GW2 would be a decent game from the articles I read and the videos I watched.

For all of you people who asked GW2 players on their opinion on the game and what the story is, here's my mini-assessment after an hour. 

1) Fantastic character creation system - may be the best looking I've ever seen in an MMO

2) Great soundtrack for title page and character creation

3) Voice acting is absolutely horrendous in every single conversation or story intro I watched (watched about 3 intros, skipped the rest, tried many classes and races). I never skip story in MMOs, even bad MMOs, but the acting is torture to listen to. I end up skipping it so I don't lessen my opinion of the game with every amateur line groaned out into the microphone.

4) The dialogue writing is terrible, stories are cheeseball silly, and goes hand in hand with the amateur acting. You will not walk away from quests with the same kind of smile you might get at a cleverly written WoW quest (even if the quest gameplay sucks, the writing is generally good in WoW).

5) The game looks decent, but the framerate is not optimized well. Most settings lowered or raised do not change the framerate much at all.

6) Your 1st weapon ability can be mapped to "autoattack" mode, which it is by default. If mapped to this mode, your character basically spams the 1st weapon ability non-stop when a tab-target is in range and you initiate combat. The feeling I get is that autoattacks are the lifeblood of GW2, despite the popular opinion that there are no autoattacks in GW2. I found myself clicking absolutely nothing in some fights because the 1st weapon ability spam is pretty effective (yes this is early level, but fact of the matter is I just need to tab target --> autoattack and I'm doing good damage and killing mobs effectively with no interaction on my part.

7) For classes that have only one animation for their 1st weapon ability, it is really hard to keep watching the same animation over and over and over and over and over and over and over as the autoattack keeps spamming your attack. I saw this as an issue from GW2 videos I watched before pre-ordering, but had hoped other classes with "combo hits" with 3 attack types for autoattack would make it bearable. Fortunately, the classes that do have varying autoattacks do not look as bad. However, the classes with the triple-combo autoattacks do look a bit silly in that they are swinging each attack in under a second, again and again and again. It seems the triple combo autoattacks don't follow any 1 second global cooldown rule, and so you keep firing off melee hits like a machinegun. And it does look a bit hyper, especially when you are just pressing your movement keys to move around in a circle on your enemy while the game does tons of attacks and damage for you automatically through the autoattack.

8) Can't zoom the camera in or out while holding the right mouse button to mouse look/turn, making dynamic zooming while in combat impossible. You need to stop what you're doing and stand still, zoom in and out, then you can move around again with your locked camera distance. No dynamic zoom for you.

9) If you hold the right mouse button to mouse look/turn, and you wiggle the A and D key back and forth while moving forward (holding W), your character "wobbles" left and  right in a spastic way, sort of moonwalking on the ground texture but not taking any proper steps to do so. Looks extremely unpolished. On the other hand, not using the mouse to control your character and relying only on keyboard looks extremely smooth and well animated when turning using the keys. It is my belief that the animation for characters was tested only with keyboard turning movement controls (console design conspiracy?).

10) Camera follows your character very lazily and isn't braced properly when filming. I.e. you move the mouse left while holding right mouse button, and the camera floats gracefully for a moment before and after the turn. Everything is very graceful and beautiful and elegant when turning the camera casually, but when you are flipping the camera around like mad and spinning it like you will in pvp and know what you're doing, you don't get the same crisp response as you do from other MMOs with better camera control.

11) World events are as boring and meaningless as in Rift - NPCs shout pointless information (made worse by the insufferable voice acting), and occasionally players will be around, killing stuff in the middle of the chaos. If you like, you can join the chaos and whack the closest tab-target, or just walk past this epic rerun script and move on to some other area.

General conclusion:

If you liked WoW controls like I do, and just hated WoW for its monotonous gear grind and are looking at GW2 as a potential substitute  - beware. --IN MY OPINION-- the controls in GW2 are not bad, but the camera control and character movement control needs work. Autoattacks are a HUGE part of GW2 and are nothing like, say, Age of Conan where there are actually no autoattacks.

On the bright side, I might be able to justify the box price by sitting in the character creation screen for a few hours. That title intro UI is just amazing. It's like an interactive paint canvas or something with inspiring music.

You played for 1 hour. Think back to when you first started WoW. How many skills did you have available to you at the 1 hour mark and how much spamming you did with those skills, and how many interesting quests were given to you?

And the camera's not bad, I think it's just different. Given the amount of complaint I've seen though perhaps it might be worth it to implement 2 modes of camera movement, one that work as it is and another more WoWish.

Originally posted by Purgatus
To each their own. Except for #2, I disagree with everything you said opinion wise. Your other points seem esoteric and hardly factor in to a serious impression. Sorry you are disappointed, but thanks for supporting the game.

By not agreeing with the points I made about broken code like the camera not being able to zoom in/out while camera panning, are you saying that these technical issues are actually not issues? If you could provide any help on how to zoom in/out while panning the camera at the same time, or how to not make a character "wobble" side to side awkwardly when using A/D keys and holding right mouse button, I would really appreciate the help in getting those issues out of my play experience.

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Originally posted by meari
You played for 1 hour. Think back to when you first started WoW. H

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Some people never played wow.
I think 1 hour first impressions based souly on the game is question are valid.

Gotta say I agree with each point 100%.  I had very similar impressions.  It's great to see other people with similar feelings on this title, especially on this website.  I was starting to think I was some kind of invalid because I didn't "get" GW2.

OP, you know not what you have done! (You probably do in all seriousness.)

INC "1 HRS!??! U HAFF NO PINIONS"

Originally posted by Nitth

 

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Originally posted by meari
You played for 1 hour. Think back to when you first started WoW. H

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Some people never played wow.
I think 1 hour first impressions based souly on the game is question are valid.

 

Except the OP stated he played WoW...... seriously mate.

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Originally posted by meari

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Originally posted by Nitth  

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Originally posted by meari You played for 1 hour. Think back to when you first started WoW. H

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  Some people never played wow. I think 1 hour first impressions based souly on the game is question are valid.  

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Except the OP stated he played WoW...... seriously mate.

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Ok, sorry i missed that, I can say i was wrong to jump the gun on that.

I still think the 1 hour first impression has merit tho, and shouldn't be discredited.

Originally posted by Denambren

So I pre-ordered the game a bit ago, after the 3rd beta weekend, so I never got to play in those weekends.

I hoped GW2 would be a decent game from the articles I read and the videos I watched.

For all of you people who asked GW2 players on their opinion on the game and what the story is, here's my mini-assessment after an hour. 

 

1) Fantastic character creation system - may be the best looking I've ever seen in an MMO

 

2) Great soundtrack for title page and character creation

 

3) Voice acting is absolutely horrendous in every single conversation or story intro I watched (watched about 3 intros, skipped the rest, tried many classes and races). I never skip story in MMOs, even bad MMOs, but the acting is torture to listen to. I end up skipping it so I don't lessen my opinion of the game with every amateur line groaned out into the microphone.

Thats your opinion, actually its fairly decent, decent enough for me to not take note of it

4) The dialogue writing is terrible, stories are cheeseball silly, and goes hand in hand with the amateur acting. You will not walk away from quests with the same kind of smile you might get at a cleverly written WoW quest (even if the quest gameplay sucks, the writing is generally good in WoW).

 WHy the WoW remark, there are to many bad quests in WoW to only remotely take you serious. Some of the quests indeed could be improved in GW2, but then you must have missed the good quests as you only played an hour.

5) The game looks decent, but the framerate is not optimized well. Most settings lowered or raised do not change the framerate much at all.

 Poor you, this just hugely improved over the last stresstest, this statement alone might be enough to right now call this a fake post  The game looks still very good at lower settings, this is the reason why

6) Your 1st weapon ability can be mapped to "autoattack" mode, which it is by default. If mapped to this mode, your character basically spams the 1st weapon ability non-stop when a tab-target is in range and you initiate combat. The feeling I get is that autoattacks are the lifeblood of GW2, despite the popular opinion that there are no autoattacks in GW2. I found myself clicking absolutely nothing in some fights because the 1st weapon ability spam is pretty effective (yes this is early level, but fact of the matter is I just need to tab target --> autoattack and I'm doing good damage and killing mobs effectively with no interaction on my part.

 You can set any of the five weapon skills, to be your auto attack, or just none of them, most flexible system in the world, 

7) For classes that have only one animation for their 1st weapon ability, it is really hard to keep watching the same animation over and over and over and over and over and over and over as the autoattack keeps spamming your attack. I saw this as an issue from GW2 videos I watched before pre-ordering, but had hoped other classes with "combo hits" with 3 attack types for autoattack would make it bearable. Fortunately, the classes that do have varying autoattacks do not look as bad. However, the classes with the triple-combo autoattacks do look a bit silly in that they are swinging each attack in under a second, again and again and again. It seems the triple combo autoattacks don't follow any 1 second global cooldown rule, and so you keep firing off melee hits like a machinegun. And it does look a bit hyper, especially when you are just pressing your movement keys to move around in a circle on your enemy while the game does tons of attacks and damage for you automatically through the autoattack.

Well, just move your ass around, so the mobs cant hit you, will give you an entirely differnt feeling, and better disable auto attack since you dont like it.

 

8) Can't zoom the camera in or out while holding the right mouse button to mouse look/turn, making dynamic zooming while in combat impossible. You need to stop what you're doing and stand still, zoom in and out, then you can move around again with your locked camera distance. No dynamic zoom for you.

This will be improved, before or after release, minor point., same for your other 2 camera remarks downunder

 

9) If you hold the right mouse button to mouse look/turn, and you wiggle the A and D key back and forth while moving forward (holding W), your character "wobbles" left and  right in a spastic way, sort of moonwalking on the ground texture but not taking any proper steps to do so. Looks extremely unpolished. On the other hand, not using the mouse to control your character and relying only on keyboard looks extremely smooth and well animated when turning using the keys. It is my belief that the animation for characters was tested only with keyboard turning movement controls (console design conspiracy?).

 

10) Camera follows your character very lazily and isn't braced properly when filming. I.e. you move the mouse left while holding right mouse button, and the camera floats gracefully for a moment before and after the turn. Everything is very graceful and beautiful and elegant when turning the camera casually, but when you are flipping the camera around like mad and spinning it like you will in pvp and know what you're doing, you don't get the same crisp response as you do from other MMOs with better camera control.

 

11) World events are as boring and meaningless as in Rift - NPCs shout pointless information (made worse by the insufferable voice acting), and occasionally players will be around, killing stuff in the middle of the chaos. If you like, you can join the chaos and whack the closest tab-target, or just walk past this epic rerun script and move on to some other area.

If you only played for an hour, its hugely unlikely you got a true impression of these world events, probably only seen the first before the crowd spreads out.

 

General conclusion:

 

If you liked WoW controls like I do, and just hated WoW for its monotonous gear grind and are looking at GW2 as a potential substitute  - beware. --IN MY OPINION-- the controls in GW2 are not bad, but the camera control and character movement control needs work. Autoattacks are a HUGE part of GW2 and are nothing like, say, Age of Conan where there are actually no autoattacks.

 

On the bright side, I might be able to justify the box price by sitting in the character creation screen for a few hours. That title intro UI is just amazing. It's like an interactive paint canvas or something with inspiring music.

I dont think you even played the game.

Originally posted by Denambren

Originally posted by Purgatus
To each their own. Except for #2, I disagree with everything you said opinion wise. Your other points seem esoteric and hardly factor in to a serious impression. Sorry you are disappointed, but thanks for supporting the game.

By not agreeing with the points I made about broken code like the camera not being able to zoom in/out while camera panning, are you saying that these technical issues are actually not issues? If you could provide any help on how to zoom in/out while panning the camera at the same time, or how to not make a character "wobble" side to side awkwardly when using A/D keys and holding right mouse button, I would really appreciate the help in getting those issues out of my play experience.

 

I disagree with your opinions, not your findings with the camera. I have not tried those things so I could not say one way or another, but I belive you when you say they are there.

But your impressions are extremely limited. There are so many far more important issues to talk about. You could change the thread to "My problems with the camera" and be quite a bit more acurate.

The starter areas really suffer from not having many major event chains.

Having one big long chaining event the happens all around the first "hub" area so you're always in range of it would do wonders for the start zone.

Originally posted by Denambren

So I pre-ordered the game a bit ago, after the 3rd beta weekend, so I never got to play in those weekends.

I hoped GW2 would be a decent game from the articles I read and the videos I watched.

For all of you people who asked GW2 players on their opinion on the game and what the story is, here's my mini-assessment after an hour. 

 

1) Fantastic character creation system - may be the best looking I've ever seen in an MMO

 

2) Great soundtrack for title page and character creation

 

3) Voice acting is absolutely horrendous in every single conversation or story intro I watched (watched about 3 intros, skipped the rest, tried many classes and races). I never skip story in MMOs, even bad MMOs, but the acting is torture to listen to. I end up skipping it so I don't lessen my opinion of the game with every amateur line groaned out into the microphone.

 

4) The dialogue writing is terrible, stories are cheeseball silly, and goes hand in hand with the amateur acting. You will not walk away from quests with the same kind of smile you might get at a cleverly written WoW quest (even if the quest gameplay sucks, the writing is generally good in WoW).

 

5) The game looks decent, but the framerate is not optimized well. Most settings lowered or raised do not change the framerate much at all.

 

6) Your 1st weapon ability can be mapped to "autoattack" mode, which it is by default. If mapped to this mode, your character basically spams the 1st weapon ability non-stop when a tab-target is in range and you initiate combat. The feeling I get is that autoattacks are the lifeblood of GW2, despite the popular opinion that there are no autoattacks in GW2. I found myself clicking absolutely nothing in some fights because the 1st weapon ability spam is pretty effective (yes this is early level, but fact of the matter is I just need to tab target --> autoattack and I'm doing good damage and killing mobs effectively with no interaction on my part.

 

7) For classes that have only one animation for their 1st weapon ability, it is really hard to keep watching the same animation over and over and over and over and over and over and over as the autoattack keeps spamming your attack. I saw this as an issue from GW2 videos I watched before pre-ordering, but had hoped other classes with "combo hits" with 3 attack types for autoattack would make it bearable. Fortunately, the classes that do have varying autoattacks do not look as bad. However, the classes with the triple-combo autoattacks do look a bit silly in that they are swinging each attack in under a second, again and again and again. It seems the triple combo autoattacks don't follow any 1 second global cooldown rule, and so you keep firing off melee hits like a machinegun. And it does look a bit hyper, especially when you are just pressing your movement keys to move around in a circle on your enemy while the game does tons of attacks and damage for you automatically through the autoattack.

 

8) Can't zoom the camera in or out while holding the right mouse button to mouse look/turn, making dynamic zooming while in combat impossible. You need to stop what you're doing and stand still, zoom in and out, then you can move around again with your locked camera distance. No dynamic zoom for you.

 

9) If you hold the right mouse button to mouse look/turn, and you wiggle the A and D key back and forth while moving forward (holding W), your character "wobbles" left and  right in a spastic way, sort of moonwalking on the ground texture but not taking any proper steps to do so. Looks extremely unpolished. On the other hand, not using the mouse to control your character and relying only on keyboard looks extremely smooth and well animated when turning using the keys. It is my belief that the animation for characters was tested only with keyboard turning movement controls (console design conspiracy?).

 

10) Camera follows your character very lazily and isn't braced properly when filming. I.e. you move the mouse left while holding right mouse button, and the camera floats gracefully for a moment before and after the turn. Everything is very graceful and beautiful and elegant when turning the camera casually, but when you are flipping the camera around like mad and spinning it like you will in pvp and know what you're doing, you don't get the same crisp response as you do from other MMOs with better camera control.

 

11) World events are as boring and meaningless as in Rift - NPCs shout pointless information (made worse by the insufferable voice acting), and occasionally players will be around, killing stuff in the middle of the chaos. If you like, you can join the chaos and whack the closest tab-target, or just walk past this epic rerun script and move on to some other area.

 

General conclusion:

 

If you liked WoW controls like I do, and just hated WoW for its monotonous gear grind and are looking at GW2 as a potential substitute  - beware. --IN MY OPINION-- the controls in GW2 are not bad, but the camera control and character movement control needs work. Autoattacks are a HUGE part of GW2 and are nothing like, say, Age of Conan where there are actually no autoattacks.

 

On the bright side, I might be able to justify the box price by sitting in the character creation screen for a few hours. That title intro UI is just amazing. It's like an interactive paint canvas or something with inspiring music.

i agree with most of ur points. well observed. fanboys will eat u alive in here. u said a bad thing against GW2. beware

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General conclusion:

If you liked WoW controls like I do, and just hated WoW for its monotonous gear grind and are looking at GW2 as a potential substitute - beware. --IN MY OPINION-- the controls in GW2 are not bad, but the camera control and character movement control needs work. Autoattacks are a HUGE part of GW2 and are nothing like, say, Age of Conan where there are actually no autoattacks.

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Just gona comment here, I was actually informed to day that you can turn the auto attacks off. Which for me was great.

So you can actually get that no auto attack experience you are looking for.

In regards to character and movement, I dont like the "floatyness" of it. Some people are ok with or choose not to see it though.

And yet, How many times have we seen people say they gave SWTOR similar if not less time before deciding they weren't going to continue to play it? Why is it acceptable for someone to form an opinion in an hr for other games, but not GW2? You know, where "endgame starts at level 1"?

OP

Why did you put so much time into a review of one hour of play? Your opinions are your own it just doesn't make sense.

Originally posted by Nitth

 

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Originally posted by meari

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Originally posted by Nitth  

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Originally posted by meari You played for 1 hour. Think back to when you first started WoW. H

---

  Some people never played wow. I think 1 hour first impressions based souly on the game is question are valid.  

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Except the OP stated he played WoW...... seriously mate.

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Ok, sorry i missed that, I can say i was wrong to jump the gun on that.

I still think the 1 hour first impression has merit tho, and shouldn't be discredited.

You be the first person to say that....ROFL

If I played TSW in beta for 1 hour and said the game sucks, does that mean my impression has merit...well gee thanks. And it shouldn't be discredited either by your standard. [And I'm not saying TSW sucks; that's an "what if" situation]