Now that Guild Wars 2 has finally arrived, we are ready to get down to work and get started on our Review in Progress. During the next few weeks, we'll take you with us on our journey through the game and give you our impressions as we go along before finally presenting our final review. Check out Part 1 and see what you think!

So here we are. Guild Wars 2 is a live, changing, tangible thing. For five years, we’ve waited with bated breath on every detail ArenaNet wanted to offer up.  Now, the fun part comes: we get to see it grow, mature, watch its community develop, and we get to find out of a massive AA MMORPG can do the no-sub model from the start.  Over the course of the next 4-5 weeks, I’m going to keep a running journal on my experiences with ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2. Like recent big releases, we’re calling these “a review in progress”. They will not be scored, but should do a decent job of explaining to our audience how we’re feeling about the game as we play it and work towards the official review.  These games take time to play, and we’re not about to rush out in the first few days with some score based on beta weekend events. That’s not our style.

Read more of Bill Murphy's Guild Wars 2: Review In Progress Part 1.

Montego and PAX? Maybe those "paid-for review" people were on to something. ;)

Happy Thursday, Bill.

All valid points, I think the launch went fine considering it's scope but they really need to fix the trading post asap, it seems to be the number one issue people are bringing up. I've not played the WvWvW since beta so I'm not frustrated by the queue length yet. Another thing to note is the mail system is currently disabled; this is intentional though after the initial reports concerning account theft.

So do any of these issues put me off the game? Absolutely not, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game and agree 100% with the review thus far. The dynamic event system is a breath of fresh air and I think I'll find it hard to go back to a standard questing system now.

Yeah, I don't care about WvWvW but I see people complaining a lot. My only issue is the trading post being down. It was up for like 5 minutes yesterday then it got hammered by people and promptly crumbled apart again. I think they vastly underestimated the popularity of their game, it was evident when they had to raise the population cap on servers just in head-start because all of them were full and only more obvious with the trading post. 

Otherwise, game's been the shining example of what an MMO should be.

Good Review  imo.  Personally other then the one day over weekend when they were down for 3-4hours? I have had no lag issues, no kick outs.. nothing...Enjoying my time exploring and not feeling at like i need to get to Max level.  Most fun I have had since early Star Wars Galaxies and the very early days of WOW. 

Cheers,

Faulkner.

Originally posted by Mephster
How about more glaring issues like GW2 being a clickfest, dynamic events not as dynamic as they seem and how dynamic events don't fail very often because it is way too easy. How about the fact that this game barely innovates to push the genre forward for better things. I think this is the fairest review we are oging to see without the other future reviewers being so biased. Overall I think other reviewers will keep side-stepping the major issues people have in order to make it better than it really is.

Clickfest? As in you need to click your keys to use your skills? **looks down at keyboard** Um... what else are you supposed to do in any game? Unless someone comes out with some new hardware for the PC that is universally used sometime in the near future EVERY game is going to be a clickfest.

Ive seen plenty of Dynamic Events fail, especially once you get past the earlier ones. When the pop dies down in the earlier zones they wont seem so easy.

Same applies to how dynamic the events are. Early impression of it will seemt hat way because it was designed to break people into DEs. They become more complex and have bigger impacts as you progress further.

Im still under the impression you dont actually play and are simply taking peoples 1st impressions of the starting zones their 1st day or 2 playing as fact that the entire game is exactly like it.

haha i predict this review to be a very very high score.. I would use the term fanboy but i dont like it.. either way the guy loved GW2 before he even played it.. thats not how to go into a review..

He didnt mention how boring the Heart missions are.. collecting or killing tons of things over and over and over. He didnt mention the fact you can skip them if you like.

Also he didnt go into detail about how the so called Dynamic events in the starter areas all happen in in the same location just at random times and a lot of them are just as boring as the heart quests.

Still its the first part of the review so hopefully he will cover these later on..

Im not bashnig GW2 here by the way im just saying it how it is.. tho im sure some people will think im bashing fair enough.

Originally posted by Caldrin

haha i predict this review to be a very very high score.. I would use the term fanboy but i dont like it.. either way the guy loved GW2 before he even played it.. thats not how to go into a review..

He didnt mention how boring the Heart missions are.. collecting or killing tons of things over and over and over. He didnt mention the fact you can skip them if you like.

Also he didnt go into detail about how the so called Dynamic events in the starter areas all happen in in the same location just at random times and a lot of them are just as boring as the heart quests. (Sorry dont mean all the dynamic events happen in exactly the same spot, they each have their own spot hehe)

Still its the first part of the review so hopefully he will cover these later on..

Im not bashnig GW2 here by the way im just saying it how it is.. tho im sure some people will think im bashing fair enough.

Originally posted by Caldrin

haha i predict this review to be a very very high score.. I would use the term fanboy but i dont like it.. either way the guy loved GW2 before he even played it.. thats not how to go into a review..

He didnt mention how boring the Heart missions are.. collecting or killing tons of things over and over and over. He didnt mention the fact you can skip them if you like.

Also he didnt go into detail about how the so called Dynamic events in the starter areas all happen in in the same location just at random times and a lot of them are just as boring as the heart quests.

Still its the first part of the review so hopefully he will cover these later on..

Im not bashnig GW2 here by the way im just saying it how it is.. tho im sure some people will think im bashing fair enough.

While I agree with some of your points.  High score =/ fanboy.  Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it's bad.  It's personal taste.  I don't like Rift, a lot of other people do,  I could point out all the reasons why I don't like Rift, that still doesn't make it a categorically bad game.  It only means that it doesn't suit my taste.  

I don't really care for any Battlefield game or many other widely acknowledged good games.  Does that mean that everyone else is wrong and they're bad games? Eh, they're probably all just fanboys right? 

I remember the first weeks of WoW with long waiting-cues, a lot of technical issues, hundreds of bugs and certain content not even ready to be played.

I will be on vacation during september, afterwards I will buy Guildwars 2.

Originally posted by Nephaerius

Originally posted by Caldrin

haha i predict this review to be a very very high score.. I would use the term fanboy but i dont like it.. either way the guy loved GW2 before he even played it.. thats not how to go into a review..

He didnt mention how boring the Heart missions are.. collecting or killing tons of things over and over and over. He didnt mention the fact you can skip them if you like.

Also he didnt go into detail about how the so called Dynamic events in the starter areas all happen in in the same location just at random times and a lot of them are just as boring as the heart quests.

Still its the first part of the review so hopefully he will cover these later on..

Im not bashnig GW2 here by the way im just saying it how it is.. tho im sure some people will think im bashing fair enough.

While I agree with some of your points.  High score =/ fanboy.  Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it's bad.  It's personal taste.  I don't like Rift, a lot of other people do,  I could point out all the reasons why I don't like Rift, that still doesn't make it a categorically bad game.  It only means that it doesn't suit my taste.  

I don't really care for any Battlefield game or many other widely acknowledged good games.  Does that mean that everyone else is wrong and they're bad games? Eh, they're probably all just fanboys right? 

Come on you cant honestly say the heart quests are fun? The only reason people in my guild are running them is so they can get rewards for finishing each zone. Tho you are right we all do liek different things :)

It just sounded like he already loved the game before playing it and I for one dont want a reviewer to be like that with a game. MMORPG should have said to its reviewers ages ago right GW2 is out in a few years whos gonna do the review? Who ever it was should then have stayed away from getting too involved with GW2 until it was released :)

Anyway ill hold of until the full review is done :)