Nice review Spock, I pretty much agree with all you said, but I think you missed some bits about crafting. 

Being able to have access to your bank from any crafting NPC is awesome! 

The method of discovering new recipes is really quite unique. Stick various items into the crafting window and hit craft to see what you have created. You have to actually experiment to find new recipes, not just buy them from somewhere. 

Originally posted by rpg123

You're right, it's all about the tiny details and man does GW2 have 'em!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx4UdIpaCWU

 

I can't wait to go exploring! This will be the longest month ever :(

That is truly truly awesome!

I feel I can agree with your preview. As far as I experienced the game in the 3 beta weekeneds, that covers my experience too. Just sans one thing. In WvW my performance dropped to a slideshow, whenever there were castle sieges or anything involving masses of players in small areas. It was close to unplayable to me. I have a quite good graphics card, but a rather crappy CPU, and since GW2 makes still way too much over the CPU, it was sadly not really good. I can play normal PVE with medium settings and good looking, but WvW in crowded areas even lowest settings are slideshows. Since I played other really visually demanding games on med to even high, it must be the GW2 tech side. I played even Rift invasions with MANY players fluid, so that is my only real letdown so far.

Other note of importance: You learn all the skills you ever get within the first 5-7 levels, which does bode the question if people will find that lame, if they have the same starter skills for another 75 levels. It is something I just can't answer, since I only played 3 weekends, but it IS a question-mark in my mind.

Originally posted by Elikal

Other note of importance: You learn all the skills you ever get within the first 5-7 levels, which does bode the question if people will find that lame, if they have the same starter skills for another 75 levels. It is something I just can't answer, since I only played 3 weekends, but it IS a question-mark in my mind.

I was thinking about that too...

I guess if you feel they are stale you can always swap to a new weapon set/combination?

That is one thing WoW did well (at least in Vanilla) was give you constant little upgrades.

Little ability here, upgrade to ability there, talent point here, etc.

GW2 gives you traits each level past 11, and you get new slots and can buy/access new skills but will that be enough to componsate for the fact you will never get any more primary (1-5) skills?

Excellent review and I find myself agreeing 100% on all points.

Then I read BadSpock description of how HE plays a warrior and was all O_o. Wow! I was playing it quite much less than that eh... the occasional dodge and shield block and that is all :D

In my defense, I played just this last week end and I was more interested in seeing as much as I could than figuring out mechanics. :D

However, I found the game really easy to pick up and play. It was a bit confusing at start, but like Bad Spock said, I could always step aside and check my skills for a while.

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Elikal

Other note of importance: You learn all the skills you ever get within the first 5-7 levels, which does bode the question if people will find that lame, if they have the same starter skills for another 75 levels. It is something I just can't answer, since I only played 3 weekends, but it IS a question-mark in my mind.

I was thinking about that too...

I guess if you feel they are stale you can always swap to a new weapon set/combination?

That is one thing WoW did well (at least in Vanilla) was give you constant little upgrades.

Little ability here, upgrade to ability there, talent point here, etc.

GW2 gives you traits each level past 11, and you get new slots and can buy/access new skills but will that be enough to componsate for the fact you will never get any more primary (1-5) skills?

 

I get the feeling that the primary skill issue will become more of a non-issue as time goes on. GW2 basically streamlines what other mmos have done over the years. WoW is the biggest culprit here, with their focus on skill rotations over the years, WoW pve (raiding more specifically) devolved into skill rotations with a few wildcards here and there. So you could have three bars of skills, primarily use 5-10 of those, and have many many many more just for very unique situations.

Additionally, the very controlled amount of skills within the game should in theory make it easier to balance, also make it easier to maintain that balance. Not to mention that there's a fairly interesting mechanic of delivering new weapon skills to professions, more weapons, which I am betting we will see in expansions.

Quick edited additional comment:

Very nice review, Spock, you obviously took a lot of time formulating your thoughts and writing them out. Your review covers many of my thoughts about the game as well.

Good write up. My beta experience rating be a solid 85/100 for a MMORPG. With the polish they'll make for release and if the production quality remains the same throughout the game I can easily see myself rating it a 89/100. And if they incorporate more sandbox elements into the game? Forget about it! :)

I'm so thankful for the wipe as my main has switched from warrior to engineer with ranger and warrior as my alts.  I can't believe that two classes at the bottom of my totem pole are the ones I've connected with the most. I had so much fun this weekend with the extra influx of players. They still have a month left to go. I'm a tad worrried if they can pull it off but I think they just might.

Honestly, this game is so fun to play, it upsets me! lol

Fantastic preview! I usually agree with your posts BS and this seems no exception.

As to the accessability problem, I feel that non-gamer folk (loved ones that dont often play, etc.) actually have a leg up. They are not burdened with the baggage that we "Hardcore" MMOers have had beaten into our soul. In my experience GW2 requires a change in perspective that can be a little jarring at first. I admit I didnt "get" it at first, but once I made the connetion, the whole game seemed to make more sense.

I will never forget a panel I saw when they were talking about the DE's. They had a group of MMO vets playing, and when an event would fire and someone would come asking for thier help, they would ignore him. When asked why, they said, "We didnt have a quest to save his village."

They were so patterned by MMO's that this change went right past them. After that they added much of the trappings to aid people in the transition such as heart areas (which ironically is often held up by naysayers as proof that its the same-old same-old), but its that initial change thats difficult for people to make.

Originally posted by Meltdown

TLDR: Can't disagree with the review, just felt the newbie experience was very poorly done and the game is not as accessible to casuals as it should be.

 

Maybe I'm just too old now for MMOs... when Badspock gives a positive review for something I did not have a good experience with perhaps its me thats the problem not the game... 

 

You played a considerable amount BadSpock, my experience was quite limited (since I had weddings, christening, and other family events to attend all weekend), but I found the introduction to the game to be clunky and I didn't have the hours to spend looking up skills, strategies, and class specifics online. They start you off with so much action that I don't even get a second to read my skills, new skills are popping up on my bar mid-fight, and im just facerolling the keyboard trying to kill stuff to keep up with the pace of the game.

 

While I have no real objection to your review here and your final score, what is your view to the newbie experience? Were you very familiar with the game before you even started playing? (browsing forums, wikis, etc.). I haven't felt this lost in an MMO in a long time. I know I will now get bitched at for being a hater and getting the RTFM crowd telling me I want to be handheld. But we live in a time in which accessibility is not only necessary, but often required of games. I did not feel GW2 was "accessible" to a casual player.

 

The positive feedback on these forums (positive, suprising I know) might still persuade me to buy the game (I've probably already spent more money on steam sales of games I will never play), but I felt the one downside if anything was the entire newbie experience, I wonder how others felt about this during the beta weekends.

Keep at it. There may be a long learning curve to mastery, but the initial learning curve is not very long or steep.

The game, imo, is casual friendly, but MMO vets will have some differences to adjust to and newbs don't find the step by step tutorial you find in other games. Once people get over that first little hump, the game is pretty welcoming.

I think a few things to remember are that the professions have a lot of depth, so mastering any profession will take a good amount of time.

Don't be impatient if you aren't making best use of all your available skills early on. Most skills in GW2, beyond your 1st weapon skill, are situational.

There are some burst damage skills elsewhere on the bar and if you have any, you should learn where they are and often you will use them on cooldown. However, many more of your skills don't do more damage than your 1st skill, but they have situational uses. Don't spam these, because your DPS will suffer and you won't have them when they would be most situationally useful.

Because of these dynamics, it's actually ok, when learning your profession, to become comfortable using a couple skills, before moving on to learning any additional skills. Just because you have five skills on your left skill bar doesn't mean you need to faceroll them. Become comfortable with your auto attack. Then look to see if you have a burst skill, is so, add that to your rotation. Then look at the other skills and add one at a time into your tactical thinking. Learn when to use them and when they are wasted.

When you are comfortable with all five skills, then you can look to equip a different weapon usable for your profession, unlock the skills and learn them one by one like you did with the first weapon. Don't use skills just becasue they are now unlocked, use them to learn them and then hone your tactical use of your skills in combat.

I'd also stress the importance of becoming comfortable with the dodge mechanic. Your better off learning two skills from your skill bar and mastering their use with proper dodging mixed in, rather than trying to use all five weapon skills during every fight, even if you don't really know what they do.

Luckily, the game cuts you a lot of slack during the lower levels and you can comfortably take time to learn your weapon skills and become adept at using them properly. Nothing requires you to use all your skills to succeed. If your character level progresses faster than your journey up the learning curve, level scaling means you can stick to lower level content while you continue to learn, while gaining XP and loot based on your true level.

A couple tips: The first few levels are a lot easier if you gain a level or two via exploration before heading out to do world content. Explore your capital city, whose entrance is right near where you enter the game after completing the intro events. You get a lot of XP for finding the various waypoints, vista and Points of Interest. If some locations have you stumped, don't worry about it, but get as many as you can.

Want more XP? On your hero window, on the left, on the PvP tab, select "Be in the Mists". You can do the PvP training tutorials if you want, or just head to the Heart of the Mists. Look for the Asuran Portal that leads you to Lion's Arch. A lot to explore there for XP as well. When you arrive in Lion's Arch, the first group of Portals around you lead to World vs World, but if you head North, you'll find a Golden Lion Fountain, SW of there are the portals to all the other starting zones. You can explore those cities as well.

Depending on how much you explore, you can easily get to level 3-6 by doing some early city exploration. This will expose you to some spectacular sights, get you comfortable with traveling to other starting zones and will make the level 2-6 content areas of the game a lot easier to tackle. Even as a long time MMO vet who logged 125 hours total across the various beta events, I still start by at least exploring enough of my city to get to level 3 and usually hop over to Lion's Arch to get to level 4. It also gives you a chance to miss out on the initial 30 minutes of server rush, when everyone first logs in and floods the same starting content.

I really love that the game allows you to get by on a few skills, while rewarding you for taking time to learn and become adept at using your situational skills properly. You can viably play the game while you are near the beginning of the learning curve, but patience and practice will be rewarded.

I literally cannot wait to play though all the Hearts/DE's and skill point challenges and vistas and PoI's in every.single.zone on one toon.

Great review.

One of the little things I really liked abut the game is that the market/trading post, unless I'm wrong, is how is branches across all servers and is a collective pool.  It really sucks when your in an insanely inflated server.  The amount of items I saw on the trading post made me beleive that it was across all servers.

Also didn't touch much on underwater combat.  While in BWE3 I ended up hating the Blood Witch DE (but this can be attributed to the high respawn rates of mobs around the area and think the majority of players were lacking in terms of weapon quality in that most were still using their starter underwater weapons) but it is certainly refreshing to have a whole different world of combat with the underwater combat.

Nice Review and good job :)

I might add that walking from Heart to Heart should be no more than a placeholder, because it is their only purpose. Yes, they are the same old quests, but they serve only to reveal what is happening all around them and yes, like you said, they are presented in pretty well manner. Yet they are only placeholders and like, 20% of whole map.

Unlike any other theme park MMO where you "complete" quests, you "complete an map" in Guild Wars 2 by exploring everything, actually. It feels pretty damn awesome and THAT exactly is what makes this game unique ^_^

Originally posted by BadSpock

Originally posted by Elikal

Other note of importance: You learn all the skills you ever get within the first 5-7 levels, which does bode the question if people will find that lame, if they have the same starter skills for another 75 levels. It is something I just can't answer, since I only played 3 weekends, but it IS a question-mark in my mind.

I was thinking about that too...

I guess if you feel they are stale you can always swap to a new weapon set/combination?

That is one thing WoW did well (at least in Vanilla) was give you constant little upgrades.

Little ability here, upgrade to ability there, talent point here, etc.

GW2 gives you traits each level past 11, and you get new slots and can buy/access new skills but will that be enough to componsate for the fact you will never get any more primary (1-5) skills?

 

You know, I was a little unsure about how quickly you unlock weapon skills at first as well.  And honestly, I think it may cause some issues for people because you oftentimes unlock so many skills, so quickly, that you don't really know what they all do.  And a lot of people will just write them off as "all being the same."

But in the end though, I found myself really starting to enjoy the skills and discover them all over again at like level 13 or so.  I had unlocked the skills way earlier, but the tactical nuances of them were still a mystery to me.  As I began to master my skills, and learn when they are best used, and what combinations work well...it almost felt like how I would figure out an RTS game like Starcraft.

In games like those, you basically have all stuff in the game available to you from day 1 in multiplayer.  But you really have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to use that "stuff" in the best strategic manner.  I think GW2 is similar in this regard.  You get most of the skills very early...immediately in sPvP...but you have to invest a lot of time figuring out how they are best used.

Originally posted by Creslin321

In games like those, you basically have all stuff in the game available to you from day 1 in multiplayer.  But you really have to spend a lot of time figuring out how to use that "stuff" in the best strategic manner.  I think GW2 is similar in this regard.  You get most of the skills very early...immediately in sPvP...but you have to invest a lot of time figuring out how they are best used.

This is actually a very, very good analogy to use.

I like the way Anet says it though.

GW2 is very layered.

Each layer is nothing too complex or hard to figure out, but as you build more and more layers the game exponentially grows in complexity.

Weapon skills are layer 1, utility skills and weapon swap layer 2, traits layer 3, and gear itemization and upgrade slots etc. are layer 4.

On top of all that, you have a game where there are no "rotations" and both PvP and PvE is skill based play.

It really is so different in practice than something like WoW which is all mathematics and numbers.

Which is why WoW is so focused on gear and DPS meters and gear score etc. etc. etc. i.e. it has no "soul" because the human element is so removed.

excellent review. the only part i disagree with is the pvp score. id give pvp a 9/10, only because they have some balancing left to do, in addition to making some traits useful. WvW to me is the best open-world pvp to come out of the MMO industry since DAoC. not only that, it's better. the punishment of having to run back for 5 minutes is what makes it immersive - you actually have to fight hard to survive, and pick your battles carefully. i have the same feeling pvp'ing in WvW as i did in EVE, which was unimaginable to me.

sPVP maps are a lot of fun, especially the new one. and most weapons/specs work just fine, it's just that people have not figured them out yet. i played against some amazing mesmers on my guardian, but yes they do need more work.

Originally posted by Meltdown

TLDR: Can't disagree with the review, just felt the newbie experience was very poorly done and the game is not as accessible to casuals as it should be.

 

Maybe I'm just too old now for MMOs... when Badspock gives a positive review for something I did not have a good experience with perhaps its me thats the problem not the game... 

 

You played a considerable amount BadSpock, my experience was quite limited (since I had weddings, christening, and other family events to attend all weekend), but I found the introduction to the game to be clunky and I didn't have the hours to spend looking up skills, strategies, and class specifics online. They start you off with so much action that I don't even get a second to read my skills, new skills are popping up on my bar mid-fight, and im just facerolling the keyboard trying to kill stuff to keep up with the pace of the game.

 

While I have no real objection to your review here and your final score, what is your view to the newbie experience? Were you very familiar with the game before you even started playing? (browsing forums, wikis, etc.). I haven't felt this lost in an MMO in a long time. I know I will now get bitched at for being a hater and getting the RTFM crowd telling me I want to be handheld. But we live in a time in which accessibility is not only necessary, but often required of games. I did not feel GW2 was "accessible" to a casual player.

 

The positive feedback on these forums (positive, suprising I know) might still persuade me to buy the game (I've probably already spent more money on steam sales of games I will never play), but I felt the one downside if anything was the entire newbie experience, I wonder how others felt about this during the beta weekends.

I agree completely with your review, if that means anything. I usually don't write much in the forums, so I guess when I do I really mean it :)

One of the best if not the best GW2 review I've read on forums so far, with a fair and balanced view from someone who knows what he is talking about, played past level 5, and didn't play the game like a WoW clone, possibly thanks to his experience of games like UO. It's refreshing amidst so many reviews of people who obviously only know little about the game.

Thank you very much, Mr Spock, I may use your review as reference when people ask me about the game.

Great job Bad Spock, I bet that took a certain amount of goatee-stroking to compile? MMORPG.com should wire you a small fee for this quality review. :)

The combat was the thing I was holding my breath over: That's got to be the heart and strength of the game.

Hmm, I still have my reservations about DEs to be honest as they are still quests. I wonder if your review was benchmarked according to "current quests" vs "visceral living & breathing world experience". I guess if ArenaNet can build off this for future updates and eventually expansions and turn every future DE into meta-DE's that would set up a strong future for them though as once players get used to the "norm" that's the sort of improvement that will be necessary.

PvP sounds like the complete package for GW2.

yep def needs gpu optimization honestly should have an option to use 1 or the other more