Agreed! exploration is just so awesome in this game. I am making a habit of not using the map and not talking to the scouts. I literally just roam around. Things happen and it makes it feel like an adventure, it reminds me of Skyrim.

Of course when I know Ive run most of the area Im in I will eventually look at the map to get some direction but its just so much fun to look at something far away and go to it, and sometimes you don't even make it because some event caught your attention and drives you in a totally different route and you end up asking yourself how the heck did I even end up here. Its great!

BTW that event in the human area with the little girl in the hole asking for help, pure awesomeness. I was with some folk running an escort mission and it had just ended, some of us started going in the same direction and all of a sudden the new event pops up and the girl starts asking for help, you are wondering were the heck is that girl. Until you find the hole :)

Originally posted by Caldrin

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 :)

 

I really dont get it. You keep talking about the heart quests. Pretty sure anyone who paid any attention at all already knew theyre basically just your normal quests and are  there mainly as a hub or a way to give people a purpose to explore around the map and interact in that area while encountering / triggering DEs in the process. With DEs typically notifying you when youre in the general area, most people wouldnt even know there was any in that area unless they ran into them in the process of doing the Hearts and Personal Storyline.

The heart quets offer a little more variety than normal quests, in that you can complete them usually by doing 3 or 4 different things instead of just 1, and theres more to  a lot of them than simple kill or collect, but theyre hardly what anyone was interested in the game for. DEs and the Personal Story are the heart of PvE in the game, the hearts are just the filler.

~"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."

Sounds good to me. :)

Originally posted by Nikkita
So is it going to be 9 or 9.5? any guesses? ;)

Well I've seen 94 - 100% in the other reviews so far so I expect it to be around there, it's currently sitting at 94% aggregate score on metacritic also.

So if I hadn't played the beta, but still loved it... That would be okay?

/boggle

Originally posted by BillMurphy

So if I hadn't played the beta, but still loved it... That would be okay?

/boggle

Don't do it Bill! there is no point....

This isn't directed at Bill:

I don't want to read or even see any reviews until the games been out at least a month and the reviewer has reached the level cap and tried dungeons, WvWvW, crafting and sPVP.  Preferably on a really busy server.

Oh?! MMORPG.COM is doing an official review?

Okay then. *grin*

Bill Murphy reviewing this one then? Good! :D

This is the BIG one, can't wait to read the follow ups and eventually the review.

Originally posted by BillMurphy

So if I hadn't played the beta, but still loved it... That would be okay?

/boggle

That would make it worse! I mean a game reviewer who loves games! That is just absoluty crazy and to make it worse a reviewer with a opinion! 

@Frodo

I think the term review is not really accurate for this piece. It's more of a journal (like he said himself) a review just makes it sound...I dunno so concrete. While it could be possible the opinion of the writer is going to change while he levels. 

I've been a little dissapointed with the game so far.... I'm only level 15 or so though, so here's hoping it gets better for me... I'm happy for all the fans that are liking it though. Just for me it feels a little lacking (pretty much seen this all before tbh,  maybe I was expecting more after all the hype I don't really know)

Fingers crossed it gets better for me... :(

"I think it’s been a long time since I thought about a game this much when I wasn’t playing it. Does that make any sense?"

It makes perfect sense. I have the same symptoms and that's the sign of a damn addictive game.

Originally posted by Belly1974

I've been a little dissapointed with the game so far.... I'm only level 15 or so though, so here's hoping it gets better for me... I'm happy for all the fans that are liking it though. Just for me it feels a little lacking (pretty much seen this all before tbh,  maybe I was expecting more after all the hype I don't really know)

 

Fingers crossed it gets better for me... :(

GW2 is a very immediate mmo. You can PvP, WvWvW, crafting, and do the Dynamic Event PvE from the start. That's most of the game, though there are a few dungeons that kick in from level 30, so at 15 you likely will have experienced most of the things you can do to some degree or another. I like to play GW2 very casually as a secondary game, but if you want more then this likely isn't the game for you.

Well:

1) Reality is subjective, so are tastes.

Ofc, when we read a review, we expect the reviewer to be as impartial as possible. But, since them's gamers and humans (not  static bots) they can be influenced by their expectations and tastes

If you read a review, you can easily see what bits of info you need from all the text, compare that info to other reviews and take out a mid value.

Also, i think everyone that's playing right now has enough info to have a personal idea of the game.

The ones like me, that read reviews to find out  and sum up the info from the points thhey take out, are grateful for every review thy read.

One thing no one can deny tho : Interest is huge as far as i can see. Which means that if Anet plays its cards well..

It'll have a big comunity and things might start to change in the MMO Business

Thanks.

Cheers.

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 going 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.