I (and I believe a few others) will be standing PAX over the next few days. If you guys would like to field/post some questions, I'll try to get them answered by devs or by playing GW2. I'll also edit the OP after the convention with my gameplay impressions and answer other questions! And hopefully some of my rl friends going with me will be cool and do write ups as well. Ask away!

**UPDATED WITH GAMEPLAY IMPRESSIONS**

Just a quick note on my previous MMO/gaming experience so you have a frame of reference for my opinions: I started gaming in 2002 with DAoC, and played in a fairly casual manner for several years. I discovered GW1 in 2005, and played that until I went to University in 2008. I participated in the WAR beta for 6 months, and played for 4 months after release before finally having enough of Mythic/EA's handling of the game. I then moved to WoW and played that competitively until 5 months ago. I raided with several top 250/top 100 guilds, though shied away from PvP, except for the occasional battleground - I don't enjoy ganking or arenas.

So, on to Guild Wars 2!

I was stupid this year with PAX, and assumed tickets wouldn't sell out when they did. So when I decided it was time to buy my tickets, much to my chagrin only 1 days were left. I sucked it up and purchased a Sunday and Friday pass (which ended up working beautifully). Friday was the big day for me to get hands on at the convention: I managed to get 3 rounds  in on the PvE demo. Saturday was the afterparty at ANet's headquarters, where I managed to get in 4 rounds of PvP, and 2 PvE demos; and Sunday I played 2 rounds of PvP.

•     Low level: Ranger, Warrior, Elementalist
•     High level: Thief

I exclusively played a Thief (Pistol/Dagger) in PvP.

PvE

Character creation, as I mentioned earlier in the thread is indeed robust and working really well even at this point in the 'alpha'. I have no doubt most of you have seen videos of it, but a brief rundown of the options will follow. Asthetic creation can be broken down into four sub categories: Body, Fur/Hair, Face, Adornments, Clothing; all contain further categories (body has height and physique, face has sliders, etc).

The UI is slick and highly responsive (much like the rest of the game). The hot keys through me off a little bit, especially since I haven't played GW1 in a long time (H for the character panel????), but I adjusted quickly, altered my keybinds (6-0 are terrible defaults, though I was frustrated that it seemed impossible to bind things to shift+# variations at this point in the game, so my binds were r/t/g/v/c/shift) and started playing. The tutorial/starter zones are quite thematic - I know it's been mentioned in several interviews that they're going for a different feel with each of the starting zones, and it's true - you can feel it. My favorite was the norn one - brawling with other norn whilst waiting for Eir/Isomyr was so perfectly intune with Norn.

A brief tangent: I'm not 100% sold on how gaining skills works now, especially since some weapons are locked until levels (warriors can't use a greatsword  or dual-wield until level 10, which is silly imo). Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, I just don't feel that it's implemented in the best way possible yet. With, for example, a Sword/Board combination, you won't unlock any shield/OH skills until you've maxed out the 1H weapon skills, which leaves the shield feeling pretty useless - I want to bash some skulls in!

Back to the game! So, after you complete the tutorial (this bit has changed a bit), you'll be required to talk to a scout to progress your personal story. Before you can continue on the instanced part of your story, you'll need to fully fill out a heart of an NPC/Event area - but it doesn't take long and I  found all the events to be quite fun. One of my favorites was helping a Charr rancher herd escaped cows by prodding them along with a cattle prod. It was incredibly satisfying >_<

The personal story is engaging, and you can see how they start to diverge during the first part. For example, as a Blood Legion charr you're attacked by your tribune for getting your warband killed. As an Iron Legion? Some Flame Legion charr have heard that you have developed a gun specifically to exterminate ghosts, and have infiltrated your barracks to retrive it. The friendly NPC AI was a bit wonky, as Reeva had the tendency to just stand around whilst I was getting wailed on until I managed to kite the Gold Legion kitties infront of her. She caught on, and helped me destroy them.

There are some personal story bits that take place in the world, so to speak, but they are also instanced (and despite my earlier claims in this thread, it wasn't a seemless transition - there was a brief loading screen).

By this point (finishing the second story mission), my time would be up on the PvE stations. I can answer a few questions on combat/world/events regarding the Charr/Human/Norn starter experiences/zones, so feel free to ask away.

My time in the high level zone was spent almost exclusively exploring, though I did participate in a few events and helped take down the undead dragon (his name escapes me).

PvP

So, PvP blew my mind. I haven't enjoyed PvP since I played DAoC, and I've never really been a fan of BG/Instanced PvP, but Battle of Kyhlo was a blast.
A bit of info on my skill/weapon set up before I talk about the matches.
Pistol/Dagger

1. Ranged Attack + Vunerability (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Body_Shot)
2. Ranged Attack + Bleed (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot)
3. Ranged Attack + Leap Back (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Strike)
4. Ranged Attack + Cripple (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dancing_Dagger)
5. Melee Attack + Brief Stealth (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cloak_and_Dagger)

I slotted (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw) Withdraw as my heal; (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Step) Shadow Step, (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scorpion_Wire) Scorpion Wire, and (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Roll_for_Initiative) Roll for Initiative as my utilities, with (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invisible_Stalker) as my elite.

I built this for maximum maneourvrability and damage. I found Scorpion Wire essential as a method to pull targets towards me/off of allies so I could execute a 5-3-XXX combination for pretty impressive damage. When Scorpion Wire was down, I would initiate with either Shadow Step or Body Shot, then switch between Body and Vital shot to keep both the vunerability and bleed up. Dancing dagger is excellent for keeping targets in (or out of) range, and Shadow Strike, Withdraw and Roll for Initiative are great for kiting targets. Proper utlitization of all 3 of those + basic dodge is essential to staying alive as a thief with this setup. I only died 3 times during all 6 rounds of PvP, and consistently scored highly (I scored 200 points one game, with 10 kills and several assists).

However, the times I died were all because I was far too careless with my dodge, and ran out of energy fast which allowed me to be pinned down and killed. The second a thief loses their mobility they're dead - which made aspects of this build excellent at countering other thieves.

The map for Kyhlo is very well thought out. My personal favorite spot for fighting was the clock tower. The windows especially made for fun ganks: one game my team camped outside the windows of the clocktower, and while their entire team was sitting on the capture point, we blew the windows out and destroyed them all. It also has a lot of escape routes (blow a window out, run along the ledge then jump off on to building roofs (if you hit the roof you'll get off with minimal damage, overshot/misaim and you'll take a significant amount of fall damage which will leave you vunerable to ganks). There was an excellent game Sunday (none of which were screened/recorded QQ) in which a guardian held off a capture point for a good minute against 3 attackers. Later that match, the same guardian was able to block off half the enemy team behind glyphs and wards while his team decimated the rest of their opponents. Good guardians are going to be essential in strong PvP teams.

Feel free to ask questions/comment/etc on this, hopefully we can keep this discussion around - it's proven pretty valuable to me as well :)

Will there be some live stream like there was for gamescom? If so plz someone post the link when it will be avaiable :)

Originally posted by star
I (and I believe a few others) will be standing PAX over the next few days. If you guys would like to field/post some questions, I'll try to get them answered by devs or by playing GW2. I'll also edit the OP after the convention with my gameplay impressions and answer other questions! And hopefully some of my rl friends going with me will be cool and do write ups as well. Ask away!

Could you please test how effectively you can dodge attacks (melee and ranged) just by moving out of the way?

And uhm... if you get to ask the devs a few questions, then could you ask them if the Necromancer has got an elite Minion skill? And if they already have plans for DirectX11 support for the game?

I would really appreciate it if you could do this.

But, most importantly, try to have fun at PAX. 

Here are some possible questions....

- Will there be tournaments for certain mini games ?

- DAoC added realmpoints to give people personal goals for PvP, which was a neccesarity back then to keep them interested. EQ added AA for PvE which was a neccesarity to give people personal goals at max level. If the playerbase demands these systems after release, will the developers give intoo it.... as they allways say they are listening carefully to the players.

- In WvWvW will there be PvE objectives available .. (for excample the leading server gets access to a certain Dungeon in the WvWvW areas)

- Will the personall story continue after the main Dragon is defeated.... will there be content patches with additions to the personal story?

- DLC or Boxed expansion packs?  Did they make a dessigen about this?

- Except for the pluche charr, what other merchandise will be available in the online store?

- Will the Development team be reduced after release, or will it stay intact developing new stuff for the game?

- Will there be dynamic world events, single time events that for example make whole zones get overrun by undead.. 

- Will there be raning systems for PvE archeivements and PvP kills?

- Will it be opossible for guild to create alliances?

- Will we be able to buy a unique random art from any member from your art team? like they sit down and paint one for us and the one that buy it would be the only one that has it.

- So i heard Christmas, halloween and easter is coming back in GW2. Will there be smaller events and massive events that can take place in an entire zone or in many zones at once?

- Legendary weapon skins. Do you think of having anything like this for explorers in GW2, in form of both crafting recipes and loot drop?

- I would recommend GW2 karma vendors to sell Transformation Potions, transform into a random creature and gain a set of 5 skills for a limited time. Only usable in PvE. Could this be possbile in GW2 and would you implent it?

- Is there plans for guild houses?

Wish all the best luck for GW2. I hope you could use any of my questions :)

Try the crafitng system and mix things that makes sense, because the only crafting video was obviously played by a ..ugh...idiot :D (no offense there)

I wanna know how intuitive and fun it is:)

maybe you could use 5 min to list all the 5 skill of a Hammer warrior? No one took time to do that simple thing at GamesCom X(

i remember reading when the game was first announced that they were not going to have a open beta, is that still true?

Originally posted by cakelizard

i remember reading when the game was first announced that they were not going to have a open beta, is that still true?

From Guild Wars 2 FAQ

When will there be a beta?

We will be conducting small closed alpha and beta tests in 2011. The feedback from these tests will determine when we will do public beta tests and ship the game. Guild Wars 2 is a very large and ambitious game, and Guild Wars players rightfully have very high expectations. We want players to be absolutely blown away by the game the first time they experience it.

Hey thanks man

1. Will Sylvari characters be florescent during night periods?

2. The only hair color we have seen for the charr race is red. Will there be other hair color options for that race? and will there be other detailed options for charrs like nose size, snout length, eye color and more.

3. Not really a question but like a poster said above...if we can get a better look at hammer and greatswords in the game

i would like to know if there will be a Spectator mode like in guild wars 1. i remember we could watch pvp by selecting a match in the battleground thing  list,

Originally posted by sk8chalif

i would like to know if there will be a Spectator mode like in guild wars 1. i remember we could watch pvp by selecting a match in the battleground thing  list,

I remember watching the live stream last week, and one from the public asked the same question, de devs answered that atm they don't know if they will implement the Spectator mode or not in GW2 so we have to wait for the closed beta or the actual release to know more :/. I too am interested in the Spectator mode and i hope they will put it in the game.

Originally posted by Pigozz

Try the crafitng system and mix things that makes sense, because the only crafting video was obviously played by a ..ugh...idiot :D (no offense there)

I wanna know how intuitive and fun it is:)

I very much second this.  I would like to see more of the crafting system, especially more of the other professions.

- Is there plans to give the 2 handed axe some love in the future or will this weapon never enter the discussions?

- Are there rare, notorius, elite, etc  monsters that the explorer types will be able to hunt?

- Is the crafting in the game designed more for personal gain or is it design with crafting contributing more to an economy? I mean is crafting going to produce a lot of little things others will need or is it more like WoW where it only is good for giving yourself upgrades.

- Is Anet planning on giving  us fans a way to get one of those awesome T shirts? I wouldn't mind a purchase or even having it as part of a Collectors Edition.  

Those are the ones that came to mind right away. Have fun at Pax. I hope you get a chance to get your hands on a demo and tell us what you thought about it.

Originally posted by InFlamestwo

- Will we be able to buy a unique random art from any member from your art team? like they sit down and paint one for

I believe they are digital artists, as in their work is made with the use of PC, not pencil:>

Originally posted by Killing91

Originally posted by sk8chalif

i would like to know if there will be a Spectator mode like in guild wars 1. i remember we could watch pvp by selecting a match in the battleground thing  list,

I remember watching the live stream last week, and one from the public asked the same question, de devs answered that atm they don't know if they will implement the Spectator mode or not in GW2 so we have to wait for the closed beta or the actual release to know more :/. I too am interested in the Spectator mode and i hope they will put it in the game.

They said they will implement a spectator mode but they are unsure if it will make it in at release.

Hey OP, see ya there!

oh i forgot......Can you ask if they will attending NYC comic con? in october