Originally posted by powerplay

Correct me if I'm wrong. 

 

DEs - Run around with a bunch of people picking apples, chopping trees and zerging monsters. No stratagey needed. No communication needed. If you die run back until the event ends. Very low stress no prepartion time needed. Jump in when ever you want. 

 

PvP - Click a button jump in a battle. Gear is normalized. No need to gear up. Learn the rules, then zerg towers, zerg keeps, zerg supply lines? Heavy emphasis on groups. Not much 1v1. 

 

Progression - Max level gear is all weighted the same. One person my have a different stat allocation, but the power level is the same. No tiers, no power advancement. A person playing for 5 months is the same as someone who has played 1 month, other than cosmetics. 

 

I think this is perfect for a couple of my friends who work long hours. I'll probably tell them to buy a copy so we can jump in on the weekend and get a few hours of pvp in. If I'm correct they should be at no disadvantage compared to those who spend 40 hours a week in game, right?

The particular event you stated as a DE is a "Heart" as far as I remember which are slightly different to the actual DEs but can also have chains with different outcomes in them.

They however repeat themselves often so everyone can do them fast.

Other than that, there are also Skill Challenges, hidden places for everyone with a "explorer in their heart", crafting and much more.

PVP exists in a structured environment with small teams and in world vs world vs world which many people are involved and fight together to keep towers, keeps, build siege or defence weapons, "persuade" npc groups to help your side in defence or attack, grab supplies so you can build up siege and defence weapons.

If your friends don't wanna bother with pve at all you can even fully level up from level 1 to max level entirely in pvp.

When your level surpassed contents of a previous area you can just go back and do them without being overpowered since your level will drop to adjust with the content and reward you properly.

You can gather crafting materials from a nod up to 3 times without being worried that someone "stole them" from you while you were busy with a mob and no matter if someone else fights a mob, as long as you are helping, you will get rewarded for it without the need to be in a group or being worried that someone stole a mob from you and you will have to wait for one to respawn.

You can also check the stickies on this forum for tons of information and if you care about the lore just check the GW2 Wiki on the net.

Last but not least, you and your friends can do all this without any worries on being in dissadvantage towards a hardcore player and that's the beauty of all of this.

The hardcore player might have more titles collected or more cosmetic gear among other things but nothing else except of its own skill will make him/her "stronger" towards you.

Have fun! :)

Originally posted by Eladi

Originally posted by aejorii

Originally posted by sonoggi

Originally posted by xeniar

He had an illness,

he died from his illness and his own choise to not exercise despite his ilness,

nothing to do with diablo 3 or any gaming in general

well, technically it very much does. sitting for prolonged periods of time causes blood stasis. not sleeping causes increased cortisol levels and sympathetic activity, which increase blood pressure. assuming he did not drink enough, or drank Redbull/caffeine, this caused dehydration and further sympathetic firing. so we're talking increased blood viscosity/clotting, increased work on the heart, increased blood pressure - the perfect recipe for a heart attack, even in semi-healthy individuals. most likely, the caffeine and blood stasis did him in the most.

while D3 didnt physically reach out and clot his blood, D3 was the drug that caused him to sit there and die.

I guess all those fat people can sue mcdonalds now for making them fat.

 

He's a grown ass man and made the choice to sit there.

Just like how drug users do it themselfs, how alcohol users do it themselfs.. gaming is adicting, and it can cause death in extreme cases.

-I- am adicted to online interaction and gaming, -I- had a hearth infarct  on 13  february this year,  at that time I already was seeking help and still am in the long slow process of it, however I do sport these days and game far far less then I used to.

point is, gaming can be dangerus and like every type of substance or behavior we use to supress reallive it can get out of controll were the game(s) dictate youre live and you as a person have no choise in the matter anymore, you need someone to drag youre ass away from the game in order to break the circle (or end up in hospital like i had)

Untill developers start adding more time controll limets these cases will come up from time to time and these are just the known media covered cases. as whit mine ,there are far far more people adicted to gaming and online interaction then we dare to admit. 

so for youre own sake, stop pretending its the peoples own faulth and admit that these kind of uncontrollable adictions that causes deaths exisist , it might save youre live one day since admiting that a problem might exsiste is the first step to solving it.

 

ps: i was a very very healthy 34 year old,  health issue's are not the cause of these common hearth attacks/infarts.

basicly anyone who sits longer then 4 hours whitout moving gets a dice roll ,do this often and you get two dice rolls , if you roll a 6 youre dead.. tempt fate or get of the chair for 15 min.. that is a choice..when not adicted yet ;)

Even you are right in many points, he actually did cause his own death in this case.

- He got offered help from the outside and didn't wanted it

- He even got offered a free pass for a gym and didn't wanted it

There is only as much as one can do to help in some cases cause you can't chain these people away and force them to stop against their will.

So it was his choice to ignore all warnings and his choice lead to his death.

Many games nowadays are having notifications that are asking you to take a pause.

Heck even Guild Wars 1 had one that reminds you every hour to take a pause.

Digimon Masters online even let you only play for 3 hours straight and locked the game from you for 24 hours after.

People whined left and right and would rather quit the game and harm the developer through it instead of be thankful for such a action cause such a system takes away their right of choice or own decision.

So one can blame games as much as they want but at the end of the day, everyone is responsible for his/her own actions.

Many people underestimate the follow ups of such a behaviour with comments like "sleep is overrated" or "I can sleep when I'm dead lol" or another classic one "I'm still young and can take it".

All these comments are taking place till one day the reality bites them on their own butt and shows them that none of these comments are actually valid and that sleep is really needed cause no matter if you feel it or not, your brain and body are  taking damage when you lack on sleep and causes issues on your "system" without you even noticing.

So a huge PLEASE to everyone, take breaks in between, sleep and try to go around unhealthy eating/drinking behaviours.

Drink enough water and skip a red bull or coffee (2 cups of coffee per day are ok if you have no testinal issues and if you follow up with 2 cups of water after the coffee).

Have fun, enjoy games but don't forget real life is there too! :)

I voted for the 9th because of the following reasons:

- there were known issues prior to BWE1 that were listed so we know with what we had to deal with (mostly hardware issues with certain types of graphic cards or cpus additionaly to some text and voiceover translations).

- the stress test was mostly done to test server and quee stability and from what I experienced it did great.

- 2 weeks with the long weekend (Holiday) coming in between is a good amount of time to take care of already known issues additional to the new ones that surfaced in the BWE1.

So if everything goes well I believe that the 9th or 8th (evening) will be announced as the date for  the BWE2.

Originally posted by Jimmydean

I had a hard time getting the feeling of combat. It seemed like my auto attack would turn off randomly, and it seemed like when i was playing a ranged char it would auto-choose a target for me, and shoot that target no matter what direction i was facing / running around madly.

The reason why all of this happened  is the following:

- when you or the enemy run out of the range of your auto attack (first skill of any weapon), your auto attack will deactivate itself and you will have to trigger it manually by clicking on it.

You might however get the message that you are out of range at some point.

- the game has a semi aiming  battle system so if you turn towards a other enemy, your character will auto lock to it as if you would had used the tab targetting that is also possible.

If there is no other enemy around or in range and you are locked to that one, it will remain locked and your character will try to attack as long as you are in range or didn't cancelled the targetting lock.

Hope that helps. :)

I was actually looking forward to this weekend since next monday is a holiday and it will be a long weekend.

However, I don't mind that much for not having one cause I know that they want to give us the best experience and a as far as possible bugfree game.

They already got tons of feedback about issues they had to work on and already had given us infos about known software/hardware related issues aswell so it's a good thing that they are working on them cause this will give them the chance not only to fix them, but also the opportunity for us to maybe get new content to test in the next BW (Asura or Sylvari or both areas?), so we can send in bug/issues reports about these aswell.

Thanks for the review! :)

Just a few tipps from a fellow charr ranger:

- try to unlock all the skills from all weapons, it is helpful because of the difference between skills and because some weapons gives you more range than others!

- try to tame one juvenile pet from all species you will find along the way cause some are good as melee units, some because of the conditions they add to enemies or buff they give you and friends around you while others are good ranged units.

The wonderful thing is that you can set 4 pets (2 for underwater and 2 when you are on land) and swamp between them.

So if one is dead and you are not in a pet swap cooldown, just switch quickly to the other one and you will have immediately assistance again with the previous "dead/defeated"  pet, healing in the background.

- when you are in a downed state, one of your skills lets you heal yourself so in case you are not still taking damage, you can heal yourself again without problems.

Another one is a command that lets your pet heal you instead.

- after you reached a certain level you can switch between weapons you have equipped as first and secondary weapon in the weapon slots.

- the "soulbound" marked items you are getting as drops (like a centaur hoof or something) are mainly stuff you are selling for gold so gold shouldn't be a issue

- craft yourself 8 slots bags to make more room

- your armor "breaks" only after you got into the defeated status 6 times already

- the difficulty is fair as long as you are not running into mobs that are far above your level.

You just need to make sure that you are playing a bit strategically  and keep yourself in motion cause unlike other mmos, in GW2 dodge indeed matter.

- if you need more infos about the situation around you check through the npcs, there are tutorial quests that leads you through the game for a bit.

- the games leveling pace might look as if it's slower at start than other mmos in which you hit level leve 10 after a few quests already because of it's flat xp curve compared to the

- When it comes to Visuals, you should upgrade your graphics drivers and check the infos in which its stated which cards they are currently having issues with to see if yours is included.

Have fun! :)

I was in several launches in which all hell broke loose after everything was stable in the betas before as I was also in buggy betas that at launch day were running greatly with only like 1-2 very minor problems (like text or some type of graphic glitches that wasn't limiting or preventing anyone to have a good gaming experience).

The stress test at the 14th of this month was flawless for me.

I don't expect any less from the launch day but even if there should be issues, I'm kinda sure that they will be very minor.

They already have tons of servers on which the crowds can find a place so the load shouldn't be a huge problem and if the servers gets more optimized, things will go smoothly.

No matter how good it should go though, the one or the other person will definately run into the forums and start topics about how "bad" the launch day was and how much the game and ANet "sucks" because he got a graphic error or something (ignoring totally the fact that his own graphic drivers could be outdated which would lead to problems caused through his own fault of course...).

So no matter how good or bad the launch should be, some people will still complain and start "hate threads".

One thing I know for certain is that no matter how it goes, I will be ok with it and if there are heavy issues I'll just be patient and let them short them out before I try to enter the game again.

Please delete (double reply due to browser issues, sorry :( )

Actually all the GW1 Classes were partially intergrated into the new classes but I wouldn't mind to see either new weapons being intergrated into the GW2 classes giving them even more possibilities OR new mixed classes appearing into the horizon. :)

Originally posted by Puremallace

Source: http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/21/arenanet-guild-wars-2-a-reaction-to-sluggish-mmo-design/

Do you believe that the MMO genre has been stuck in a rut over the past few years? So does Christopher Lye, the global brand director for ArenaNet, who publicly denounced the post-World of Warcraft trend in the industry as stagnant.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Lye stated that Guild Wars 2 is walking the walk when it comes to genuinely challenging the status quo in the industry. "Honestly, I think the problem is that there's been a lack of change in MMO design and that Guild Wars 2 is a reaction to that," he said. "People will call this risky, but we think it's riskier just to churn out the same MMO that everyone has played before."

Lye pointed to Guild Wars 2's scaling dynamic event system and its action combat as examples as to how ArenaNet is forging its own path. Observing that player consumption of content is "virtually insatiable," Lye said that the team has developed tools to allow it to implement changes and additions to dynamic events in hours, not weeks.

Is this industry stagnation coming to an end? Lye says yes: "We're finally seeing a point where companies realize that they're not going to create the next great MMO by just copying what's come before."

 

 

The massive balls this guy has to say this crap and just pretend like Rift never happened is just amazing to me. Are devs just inside a little box where nothing gets in that is happening around them? Can ArenaNET please release this game already so that it can stop riding the hype train?

Actually he has a point when it comes to dynamic events and for those that still think that the Hearts on the map are the dynamic events you are plain wrong.

With that said, Rifts only unique feature were the skill system that was a mix of other older mmos skill systems mixed together.

The Rifts themselves were just a bunch of mobs spawning in certain locations and attacking people around them or "invading" some trading spots or villages/towns.

Many of the over 300+ mmos I tested, many old and newer mmos had their own unique features, most of these are overlooked because they are not getting enough exposure and advertisement that makes them well known to the mmo players.

Some of them also unfortunately because they are handled THAT badly by their developers so that people are dropping out left and right the whole time.

Through this, some of them just "die away" pretty fast or after only a year or so while others are still there for many years, having their small communities keeping them alive for a very long time.

WoW was one of the less innovative mmos ever and some others that tried to walk on the same path were exactly the same.

GW1 among a few other more known mmos was one of the most innovative games in the industry alone through its storytelling, skill and battle systems among other things.

GW2 is currently indeed breaking the mold of the "good old, rinse and repeat the same systems to create a new mmo" habit and in my opinion it is a good thing.

So I don't see anything wrong with what he said in this interview.

All I see is, that he is proud to be able to be a part of the developers team that created a mmo that indeed does things differently than many other mmos out there.

I hoped they would be both available in the first beta weekend already cause I wanted to start Sylvari and have a Asura as my secondary and Charr third. :)

Since they weren't I started with my Charr Ranger and created my Necro as a Human.

If they should be available in the next beta I will definately try them out asap.

Originally posted by Leethe

GW2 is not a paradigm shift. It's not a WoW killer and it's not revolutionary. It has the same things with the same type of quests in a themepark setting that we are all used to. It has ranged and melee classes with magic and guns. So far so WoW.

Here's the thing though...

Somehow, and I really don't know how, they have removed the things that make me wanna leave. When I beta'd DCUO I thought it was awesome but in my heart of hearts I knew that eventually it would turn into a gearscore race. I went ahead anyway in the hope that the combat and the DCness of it all would gloss over the cracks. It didn't.

Same with Rift (much props to Trion who actually care about their players and produce content in good time and are involved in world events. Defiance: I'm comin' baby!) After the initial excitement with the souls system it was clear that I would get bored but I played anyway for a bit eventhough I knew it wasn't for me.

Same thing with ToR. Now in beta I thought the story was great but the trooper quests felt boring and the world lifeless and closed-in. I put that down to beta and figured that things would pick up when I got off plane and got my ship. My shadow was a bvit better but again I thought it would get better after tython, then I thought it would get better after coruscent, then taris then nar shadaa...it didn't get any better.

It's like at the start of a new relationship. Sure they may look great but in your head, the relationship destruct timer has already started ticking. You try to have fun while it lasts but you know what's down that road, you know how the story will end. It may sound a bit mushy but when playing GW2 these last couple of times, I don't hear the timer. I can't really explain it but if all cakes are made of the same stuff then I guess I have chanced upon the right recipe  in the right place and I shall dine here for a while.

I think I can understand and explain to you why you don't "hear the timer":

- you are not stuck in a linear process that needs you to go from point A to point B from the first day you start till the max level or till you quit the game

- you are not stuck in a role classwise in which it's a MUST to do what the class want's you to do so you can fit in a group that otherwise would exclude you making the game less fun for you since certain parts of the game could be only done with a group, that at the end shuts you out of said parts

- you can visit the whole world whenever you want without any limitations or messages like "you need to finish the kill 10 bobos quest, before you move to the next area" OR "you don't match the appropriate level for the next area" and stuff of a similar nature

- you don't have to be max level to enjoy pvp

- you don't have to have a uber gear to be better than others

- you don't have to be afraid that you will get ganged by a griever that wants to lay his negative energy allover you only because he had a bad day or because he loves to frustrate low levels

- you don't have to rush to a resource first because otherwise someone else would loot it before you and it will be gone

- you don't have to worry that someone will kill a enemy before you having you waiting for like 10 minutes for the next one to spawn OR losing your quest and have to redo it because it was a timed one and someone else grabbed the mob you needed for it leading to you failing your quest

- you don't have to rush through raids for like 700 hours to get a certain gear only because it dropped for others the last 699 hours while you went out emptyhanded

- you don't have to pay extra or pay monthly to enjoy certain parts of the game

With other words, the game gives you choice and freedom on about everything and that's very refreshing and fun.

Originally posted by tixylix

I really have tried to like this game after all the hype gamebreaker were giving it saying it's so revolutionary and innovative. Then all the hype from people about how it isn't your typical MMO with kill 10 rats quests and how dynamic events change everything got me to pre order to try the beta cause you have to pay for it these days.

Logged in to a bland selection of races, Gamebreaker were saying how unique and amaizng they look, yet to me they just look bland and the two not available just look so cheesy like some Japanese MMO. The class selection is hardly inspired either, it's just your standard fantasy selection of classes, nothing groundbreaking or innovative yet...

Once I actually got to the gameplay the first thing you're tasked to do is speak to someone just to be told to run over there and speak to someone. Then you get told to go to some fort and defend it from waves of people, the strange thing is it was beta and this part had no people in it, making this really unfun to play as it was designed for lots of people quite obviously. The combat is really boring too as it's press one button over and over until you unlock the next part and then click two buttons until you unlock the third. I just don't get it, just let me have all the abilities from the get go, it only takes like 20 mins to unlock them anyways and it's so unfun to play with just one or two abilities. There was nothing amazing about the quest, defend waves of people and defeat the boss, we've seen it before and i did it solo cause there wasn't anyone around. I looked at the server selection and turned out my server was light, however in GW2 one of the amazing and revolutionary things is to only allow you to play on one server, I even deleted all my characters and it still wouldn't let me switch.... so great I'm stuck with no people!

There seemed to be more people in the main world but the very first quests were "kill 10 of thse" or "collect 12 of these" or "run back and forth to speak to people" and straight away I realised all these people and Gamebreaker were lying, it's just boring standard MMO quests. I really don't understand how anyone invests in the main story, the characters or the world as it all seems rather bland, cliche and it feels very Asian MMO like. To the point where the movement is very Asian like as well where the running animation is like wide strides but slow ones and your character is moving too fast lol. When you jump, you can see your character jumping and you can jump onto things and yet you still feel like you're glued to the ground.

The dynamic quests turned out to be public quests from WAR, they aren't dynamic but just recycle themselves over and over. People are saying they're like evolved versions of the ones in WAR but they play exactly the same. There will either be waves or stages inside a circle on the map and it all ends at a boss, rinse and repeat. I just don't understand how people are calling this innovative, even RIFT had this system and it's something that I've experiences many times before. Though Gamebreakers excuse is "it gets better at later levels" but where have I heard that before? Like every MMO before lol....... I'm not interested in playing through a crap part of the game to get to the good part.

 

The PVP is basically WAR as well where you have boring Battlegrounds of poorly designed maps which don't hold a candle to what WoW's did back when I used to play that. You have no world PVP as the PVE zones are all cut off from the PVP so that makes PVE more boring knowing you cannot gank or be ganked, shame because proper world PVP is dynamic and fun. You just have big battlegrounds with keeps in them that I dunno probably hold 300 people and instead of making another instance of it they make you queue up forever. Like hang on you have this overflow server for all the PVE zones and you cannot make another instance of the Keep PVP stuff? When I did eventually get in I quickly found it plays exactly like WAR's Keep PVP in that you will find massive zergs of Ranged all sticking together making melee pointless and you just follow the zerg. I realised why again I found WARs PVP boring because fighting in zergs isn't fun, what is fun is small group or 1 v 1 in true open world PVP....

 

I came into GW2 expecting great things after the hype, sites like Gamebreaker saying how it is nothing like other MMOs. What I got is Warhammer Online 4 years later............

So.... to break it down:

- you "tried" to like the game but never bothered to see any positives in it nor did you really gave any attention on the systems

- you call the selection of races "bland", yet over the 300+ mmos I have played most of them having only humans in various classes.

Some are having elves (mostly same models with longer ears and a bit more slender looking then the humans), partially orcs/ogres or a mix of them OR dark elves (same human models with a other texture color) OR "fairies" (same human model but smaller and without wings) OR Dwarfs which is all default stuff and more bland than a Charr, Asura or even Sylvari.

VERY few mmos are providing other types of races with the most unique unded them being Horizons in which you could even play as a real Dragon or goat man and the like along with Anarchy Online that had alien races or EQ 2 among others.

- In the most mmos you get the following selection: warrior, priest (called fairy or healer or cleric in some), Mage (called wizard or witch or even warlock in some) and a Archer (called Ranger or "Elf" or goes through as a Thief class in some).

Can you please count me how many MMOs are providing a Engineer or a Mesmer?

I admit Necromancer is partially included in like 5 mmos in overall and even these are having a "default" edition of the class instead the possibility to go in various directions like minions master, blood drain, curses debuffer among others.

Show me a game in which a warrior can be as versatile as in GW 1 or 2?

Show me a Thief class that can be that versatile?

Show me a Guardian that can be that versatile?

Show me a Ranger that is not a damage dealer in other games?

I can be a supporter ONLY if I choose to and help teams with my summons, traps and healing as a Ranger but I guess you didn't bothered to find out right?

Classes Combos?

Hmm... I guess there are indeed differences and innovations there. Far more than your "default" classes in other mmos provide you with.

- So you were told to speak to someone during the TUTORIAL part of the game and that's bad?

Not everyone has the same level of experience with mmos and even mmos with mostly the same systems still have a feature or two that play differently so a tutorial is very well needed in any game.

Other than that for dynamic events to be solved you don't need to run to anyone!

If you just rush into the battle with the others, you will contribute to the quest and fullfill the purpose of it, get rewarded for your contribution without even speaking a single word with anyone.

In my opinion far better than "go kill 10 bunnies, talk to me, now go kill 20 bunnies and come back again".

I also dissagree on the quests being the same like other games cause when you help a npc in GW2 you see that it has from a small to a larger impact(the npc sells items after you helped OR  a chain of events triggers with other things to accomplish or help with and so on...).

There are also 3 different types (excluding the dungeons and the PvE events in PvP) of events, the hearts, the dynamic and the meta (world) events. 

- In every mmorpg you will have to unlock skills overtime, The main difference in GW2 is that you unlocking the weapon skills by actually using the weapon. The first "skill" is the default attack and after you locked a target and are in range it will automatically repeat itself instead of having you spamming it like you obviously did.

The combat even provides you not only with jumping (like jumping off a edge into the water to successfully save yourself as a last resort if you are cornered and outnumbered) but also the ability to dodge more than once, as long as you have enough stamina to do it.

You obviously also didn't play enough to unlock the possibility of switching between weapons with only a small cooldown that gives you the possibility to have a new set of skills in like 2 seconds without the need of fiddling around through tons of slots.

You can also switch support skills you already unlocked with 2 clicks at any time as you go too.

- you CAN switch server in the betas actually without any cost.

If you saw that the server was barely used, why did you even select that one?

People explore a lot in this game so they don't stick in the tutorial/starting area to wait for you. You wouldn't either.

I won't go into the PvP stuff at all.

You posting shows that you neither bothered to inform yourself correctly, nor did you put any real effort to learn the game while in it(if what you are writing is even true).

From what I can see from the screenshot he provided the local.dat file shouldn't be there cause when I'm comparing it with mine I have none.

Except if its a temporary file that belongs to the download the launcher is currently trying to place in its directory so it can update the files.

From the screenshot provided it also shows only the amount of files I had to download today for the stress test which means that everything else should be ok.

All he needs to do is run the exe as administrator if he is on vista or win7 and after the game was updated it should work.

It seems however that by the amount of files shown, he thinks that the whole game tries to redownload itself so he breaks it up or something?

Originally posted by Caldrin

Did you happen to try and log in sat night? They had a few issues then that sounds like the issues you had, did not take them long to sort out.

Also the beta weekend was just for the templars yes and we where told this quite some time ago, there will be other open beta weekends that test the other faction starting areas.

Character editor was limited, Funcom have said there will be a lot more opitons at launch :)

 

Not a bad overview :) I must say other than the sat evening for about an hour i never had any server issues. Infact I had the zone i was in go down and i had a message asking if i wanted to move to a different one of log my character out. Thought that was pretty cool.

 

 

Yes! I was unfortunately ill so I missed friday evening (GMT+1 here so evening my time) and only logged in saturday evening in which I had the issues.

Originally posted by zevni78

You avoid the booby traps by moving outside the vision of the cameras; there is a path, search in the time it takes for the countdown to finish.

 

Spoiler

 

You hug the walls in the case of the first room, pretty much for the second too, though you can jump over to the panel on the wall, which may be unintentional.

 

I agree with the review, though I don't think your character needs to talk, for rp reasons, its about the npcs, not you.

Thanks for the spoiler. ^_^

I tried to jump over the loader(don't know how to word the vehicle otherwise sorry) on the first trap but ti still went off, tried the walls too but it still went off so when I entered the room after I had regained my health and saw the switch, I thought it would turn off the traps. Well... it didn't. :p

Anyway, what I meant with the character being more active wasn't for rp lovers only.

It was more about the character being a active part of the world when interacting with these npcs instead of the npcs talking their monologue while the own character has sealed lips and only watches without any reaction at all.

In my opinion and for my taste it takes away a lot from the character that one controls.

As example: when you go to Andy the deputy why not let the own character say something like:

"I finally found you!"

Andy: "who are you and why were you looking for me?"

You "the sherriff told me you would be up here", "I'm coming from..." blablabla and so on giving continuity, interaction and a more "living" character.

I mean, even the zombies say something right? ;)

Hello everybody! :)

Like many others, I got the chance to check and test this game out as also to send in two bug/issue reports.

Techinical Issues

So everything started with me trying to login but getting thrown out when I tried to create a character (screen didn't loaded and it told me that the server disconnected even it was at a medium load).

So after I managed to enter and was excited to create a character for the dragon faction I saw that only templars were available. Well it's a beta so such limitations are normal.

I created my character, typed the name and the storytelling began.

Unfortunately after the introduction happened, I stuck on a the loading screen again for 10 minutes while the music was playing and the mouse was reacting (I could also minimize and maximize the game again so it wasn't my pc) till I got disconnected again.

In the third try I managed to go further and start the tutorial that lead me to another disconnection after it ended which lead me to shut down the game and go to bed.

So I tried again at sunday and played a bit through the story which I found entertaining, got to visit the training hall and test all weapons available there before I went for a elementalist with pistols as second weapon.

All in all the game run smoothly at sunday and I had to end the game only once.

These were the only technical issues I had in overall which were a bit surprising since the server were only on medium load but it is a beta after all so it gives the devs a chance to improve things for the next one.

Story/Design/Graphics

I found the atmosphere/environment to be great for such a type of game.

It gave me a resident evil feeling that I liked a lot.

The animated NPCs saying the story and explaining what happened or what they need was a big plus for me and I enjoyed it a lot.

The graphics were good and added to the overall feeling.

The only thing that really bugged me was that while the NPCs felt so alive, the own character only stood there listening what everyone has to say without EVER opening it's mouth or even making a other move except of repeating the idle animation.

This part needs definately improvement, animations on our own character and talking to the npc would make the whole thing more alive and will add a lot at the same time.

Another thing I disliked a bit were the limitation of the character editor cause no matter what I used for my female character her face structure would barely change at all. Since it's a beta thought I didn't minded too much cause it could be the case (and I really hope it will be), that more options will be available in the release.

Gameplay/Systems

As I already stated above, I loved the environment cause it added a lot to the atmosphere.

The GUI system is very good and doesn't take a lot of space out of the screen which is always a big plus.

The character stats, inventory and skills learning were good and the possibility to go anyway you want with your class and mix it up to what you wanna be able to do (some presets were there as guidance aswell) is a very nice touch that adds a lot in my opinion.

What I missed animationwise was the ability to dodge or at least jump effectively.

The jump animation didn't look right and needs a lot of improvement and the movement looked partially as one would be a turtle in a world filled by "rabbit zombies" cause when you hit one out of a group they run down to you THAT fast, that it was as if they had a immediate "red bull" boost or something.

What bothered me the most was the combat when it comes to this.

The zombie run to you and as long as they have life points they are like "glued" on your body no matter if you try to strafe or move to any direction.

This is a major point that needs lots of work in my opinion cause it destroys the atmosphere and feeling the environment, theme and skills are giving to the game

Some quests needs improvement aswell.

I had a quest I needed to find the pieces of a report and the pieces were always outside of the radius they were supposed to be in (marked as circles) which made it unnesecary extra difficult to find them at times.

Also the solo instance with the booby traps said "try to avoid" the booby traps but there were no options given to do so in the instance which is a bad thing in my opinion. So I went through 2 of them (since the enemy was out of range to be attacked and pulled to my direction) and waited till I had full health again.

Then went to the room and heard the countdown so I run to the switch, I flipped it to deactivate the traps and after the deactivation (which obviously were none), the room exploded and I was dead.

Rinse and repeat without having a chance since you had to move through the traps after all (tried to find items or to jump over but nothing worked).

Maybe there was some kind of trick to overcome this but the way it was made was once again unessecary difficult and illogical.

There should be at least a hint or two spread around for the player to find so they can help themselves or at least a update in the quest log after one entered and the cutscene with the npc has played instead of only writing "find a way to overcome the booby traps".

So all in all I think the following:

What's good:

- Environment and overall feeling

- Storytelling

- Skill/Class system, Inventory, GUI, Attribute systems

- Outfits

- Graphics

- Partially the Quest System (many different types of quests and sub-quests with various tasks for lots of fun)

What needs improvement:

- Character creation

- Character animations (cutscene animations to breathe some life into the own character and jumping too)

- Combat System (needs more action, tab targetting is ok but staying in the middle of zombies shooting with them being glued to you is not)

- Partially Quest system (some quests needs to be adjusted to prevent illogical difficulty and reduce the frustrating factor they provide)

- Server Stability (a server that drops people out when its on medium load, will have from heavy to impossible problems when it comes to a high load so they really need to look into that and improve it)

Potential

The game has its own great design which can benefit from and most of all from which it can stand out a bit from all the fantasy and sci fi stuff we are usually getting.

The story quests are a bit stale overtime and very linear but through the sub-quests people getting the chance to explore more of the world and have additional fun tasks to take on.

IF the developers improve the combat system, take care of the server issues, improve the quest system and give the own character some very much needed animations and speech, the game could go very well and stay active for years to come in my opinion.

Originally posted by redcap036

YES YES YES, runs around with t-shirt over head and arms flailing wildly.

 

Now i'll have to work out what time that is in Austrailia.

It depends where in australia you live.

I'm living in Germany and I'm GMT+1 which means that for me it starts at 7pm(19:00) my time.

australias difference to me is (add the hours below to my 7pm to get your result):

Cocos Islands +4,5 hours

Christmas Island +5 hours

West Australia +6 hours

South and North Australia +7 hours

Capital & Queensland- Brisbane +8 hours

Lord Howe Island +8,5 hours

So if you live as example in Sydney (capital) it starts at 3am in the morning your time.

Hope that helps! :) 

Originally posted by EduardoASG

well.. that video shows me some reasons why i will not buy gw2.

1st- auto level scaling. I am not a fan of this auto scaling, quite on oposite. You level up a toon you want to feel some progression, beeing stronger in the world you play at, and so on. Auto scaling removes that and while 'playing' with your levels and abilites prowess, basically removes any sense of ' im building somehting here'. This alone would be a reason for not to play GW2.

2nd - The flashy colors would hurt my eyes. Any freaking skill has colors all over the place, explosions and such. Too much 'cheap f2p game like' to my taste..

3rd - The animations/graphics. Its like playing Lineage2 again.. another freaking game looking the same as all korean/asian tittles since 2004. The girl Wiz in order to cast a spell must raise a leg and skirt and say HAI over and over again. Dont know about you guys.. maybe someone feels turnned on with this crap.. im sure i do not.

4th - An event where you basically kill animals. You dont kill orcs or another mitholoy beeing, you kill almost inofensive animals. So you see a bunch of wizards rangers paladins or w/e beeing heroic killing.. just animals. What an event.. i am sure every single of those players, after so boldly having a 2 hour session of killing animals must feel better for the rest of the day.

5th - Animations again. Not the art direction now but the low quality of the animations shown in the video. You see for instance the guy firing a bow. He is using like at most the same 3 or 4 animation frames all over again. Wth.. c'mon we are in 2012..

6th - The whole game and event concept. Look to how many players are there just killign a few mobs. This is old design, a cheap way of getting kids entretainned spending hours clicking their mouse trying to kill somethign with inflated hps to make them think they doing something heroic that could even change the world they live in. Just sad..

- Please inform yourself before you judge something you didn't even play yet http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

- Watching a video that might be in lower quality then the in game graphics doesn't give you the full experience on the visuals nor is it comparable to how you would experience the game by playing it instead of watching a video only.

- Read the stickies on this forum to get a insight of many already known things. Under them you will also find further information about Dynamic, Story and Meta events.

- Keep in mind that these animals attacked the village because of a previous event that took place (kids tried to summon the bear spirit , making the bears around them aggressive towards them that lead to the attack).

That gives a sense to the attack and a explanation of why it happened in the first place by showing you as a player what the actions of some npcs or partially even your own actions could lead to. In my opinion a great system you won't get in any other mmo yet.

Unlike games like Guild Wars, City of Heroes/Villains, Monster Forest Online (that died because of the idiotic handling of its developers among bad advertisement, graphics being too kiddy and so on) and a few other MMOs out there, WoW brought nothing new on the table and was just a mmo that was patched with features from older ones that were existing and partially still exist (Lineage 2, EQ and EQ2, Fairyland among others they "borrowed" features from) far longer than WoW.

Due to this and for the fact that WoW is a good mmo for "newbies" of the MMO world that never had played one before, I really dislike the term "WoW Clone" or the "Mother of all MMOs" that was started by a few obviously VERY young fanboys/-girls out there that mostly had no knowledge about mmos prior to WoW anyway.

With that being said, I played GW in the alpha preview back in 2004 and had even saw screenshots from the year 2001 in which GW was already in development with some partially for todays standards "sucky graphics".

I fell in love with the game, its design and innovation that brought with it, participated in all betas, played all chapters + updates and expansion while staying actively in the community for over 5 years and still visiting occassionaly, even I had moved to other MMOs that were playing more actively.

That's 8 years and I'm still logging in GW to find tons of people playing pve and pvp regularly there.

So to answer your question, I know at least 5 people that will be sticking around GW2 and probably later Archage additionaly not only for a few months but for years to come.

Will it be 5+ years again? I can't tell!

If things stay innovative, updates will come(which I'm sure off) and more stuff will be added like extra modes (housing and gvg comes to mind) like they did in GW however, I think that this will be definately the case again.

So no matter how many other games might adapt the GW 2 system by adding their own twist on it, I won't be turning my back to GW 2.

I'll just try them out the way I did with over 300 mmos through the years (yes I'm that old so what? :p ) to see what they are bringing on the table and give them credit for what they did well or even better.

With that said, I won't be calling them GW 2 Clones, I will be calling them by their names as I always do with any other mmo.