Guild Wars 2 Public Beta: Observations

First of all: great job ANet, it only took few hours to get things working. It took close to 24 hours from Blizzard to get D3 Open Beta in any kind of working order :D

Overall the game seems to function fairly well, but there is some minor things I want to note.

• When opening map while holding RMB, character can't be steered.
• When using melee attacks, one must manually to move to range.
• Dynamic events don't change the world very much, all is a lie :(
• Dynamic events seems to have minimum difficulty, one or two players will have a hard time completing one.
• Looting requires a) navigating to corpse b) interacting with it c) claiming items, too long a chain.
• The there was about eight bugs I reported, but they are not included in this list.

But then there also is some bigger concerns

• Mobs start to regenerate far too fast, pull little too far and they get full health almost immediately.
• Leveling progression is slower than that of enemies, making fights harder and harder, and then there will be level grinding..
• I want Energy back to the game, this is just spam-fest now!
• There is not too much freedom on skill selection. In original Guild Wars I could fill my bar with heals, for example, but here I can only select one. The unchangeable skill selection for weapons also was bit of a let down. Of course one could change weapon, but I want to use that weapon differently.

But there was some great things, too.

• Dynamic events, at least when experiencing them the first time, they were just great. People would just pour in and everyone would just really want to beat the bad guys or whatever.
• New quest system. Yes, it is the same old 'Kill ten rats and/or do x', but no explicit quest accepting/turning in procedure, gives more fluidity for everything.
• And about fluids, water is an interesting element, no longer a barrier.
• Reformed combat. Moving while casting and attacking really gives a new dimension for combat and exploration.

A smooth start for the first Guild Wars 2 Public Beta, NOT! And diary!

The beta was supposed to start at 22 o’clock, but when I tried to log in about 21:45, I got in after a few tries !!1! Even managed to make a nice Norn Ranger and watch the opening cinematic, but then I was greeted by a black screen at the end of the opening cinematic and hung there… And now I can’t get back in, forums are down and there is talks about crashed servers. Well, so far this still has gone better than D3 open beta. Really hoping I get to play the game today.

22:57: Managed to get to character selection screen for a brief time, but all controls became unresponsive, so I logged out, again.

23:06: Third time in, failed to get to game world, and UI locked again.

23:54: Finally managed to log in, same error and lockup. Went to sleep.

-- Saturday begins

3:30: Woke up, checked whether the game works, it worked. Went back to sleep.

4:30: Couldn't sleep, started gaming. All is well.

5:46: Got kicked out. Got back immediately. Seems that my progress was rollbacked about five minutes..

6:16: Got kicked out, couldn't get in right away. I hear there's some maintenance.

6:50: It's on!

14:30: I was going to switch characters, but error messages greeted me then and every time after character selection. Maybe I should take this moment to eat something.

15:15: Servers allowed me to continue gaming.

19:00: Felt sleepy, wen't for a nap.

20:40: OK, let's continue.

22:45: Got kicked out without so much of an error message.

-- Sunday begins

00:45: It's on, finally!

00:55: Or not.. no error once again..

05:55: How about some sleep now? Not tired yet, but bad things might happen without sleep. Well, at least I played 18 hours and 30 minutes with the last sleep. Pity that beta end Monday at 09:00, and I have normal things to do then, so can't play too this following night.

14:10: It's on!

00:28: First ever crash for me.

01:55: Oh well.. have to get up fairly early in the morning, so this will have to do... 30 hours(exactly) is better than nothing.

07:55: Before going to sleep I heard there would a ending event, so had to wake up to play it. Turns out it only begun when the beta was supposed to end. Anyway, it was awesome! I even have few videos in youtube about Champion Bloodthirsty Black Moas.

09:03: Bam! Login screen without error message, I'm getting used to this. Pity this was the last time this would happen in a long time, as the BETA IS OVER! Playtime: 32 hours 8 minutes.The beta was supposed to start at 22 o’clock, but when I tried to log in about 21:45, I got in after a few tries !!1! Even managed to make a nice Norn Ranger and watch the opening cinematic, but then I was greeted by a black screen at the end of the opening cinematic and hung there… And now I can’t get back in, forums are down and there is talks about crashed servers. Well, so far this still has gone better than D3 open beta.
Really hoping I get to play the game today.

22:57: Managed to get to character selection screen for a brief time, but all controls became unresponsive, so I logged out, again.

23:06: Third time in, failed to get to game world, and UI locked again.

23:54: Finally managed to log in, same error and lockup. Went to sleep.

-- Saturday begins

3:30: Woke up, checked whether the game works, it worked. Went back to sleep.

4:30: Couldn't sleep, started gaming. All is well.

5:46: Got kicked out. Got back immediately. Seems that my progress was rollbacked about five minutes..

6:16: Got kicked out, couldn't get in right away. I hear there's some maintenance.

6:50: It's on!

14:30: I was going to switch characters, but error messages greeted me then and every time after character selection. Maybe I should take this moment to eat something.

15:15: Servers allowed me to continue gaming.

19:00: Felt sleepy, wen't for a nap.

20:40: OK, let's continue.

22:45: Got kicked out without so much of an error message.

-- Sunday begins

00:45: It's on, finally!

00:55: Or not.. no error once again..

05:55: How about some sleep now? Not tired yet, but bad things might happen without sleep. Well, at least I played 18 hours and 30 minutes with the last sleep. Pity that beta end Monday at 09:00, and I have normal things to do then, so can't play too this following night.

14:10: It's on!

-- Monday begins

00:28: First ever crash for me.

01:55: Oh well.. have to get up fairly early in the morning, so this will have to do... 30 hours(exactly) is better than nothing.

07:55: Before going to sleep I heard there would a ending event, so had to wake up to play it. Turns out it only begun when the beta was supposed to end. Anyway, it was awesome! I even have few videos in youtube about Champion Bloodthirsty Black Moas.

09:03: Bam! Login screen without error message, I'm getting used to this. Pity this was the last time this would happen in a long time, as the BETA IS OVER! Playtime: 32 hours 8 minutes.

In anticipation of next week’s Guild Wars 2 Public Beta

I’ve had high hopes for GW2 even before it was announced, and finally I’ll get a chance to try it out personally! Needless to say, I’m getting fairly exited here.

Or that would be the case had I not seen videos of previous closed beta. I’m having serious doubts on the fact they removed Energy from the game. That means that for most of the classes there is only a single resource to manage(recharge). Without firsthand playing experience I am having huge difficulties believing that recharge and timing alone give as much of a challenge and joy as they did in Guild Wars 1 which also had Energy.

And what I have gathered from videos and other sources, I feel that Guild Wars 2 has been dumbed down in other areas, too. Take the Mesmers, for example. They’ve been hugely shown in the media, but I haven’t seen them doing much shutdowning. Ok, Izzy mentioned that interrupts for example were given a much smaller role than in GW1 due to latency issues, but.. They worked just fine in GW1, don’t change that. They add depth to the game and encourage varying casting order and positioning away from the interrupter. On the other hand they allow skilled players to really dominate their enemies if they know what they are doing, rewarding expertise.

But that gets us to another key aspect: positioning. The dev team has been pretty exited about it’s importance and told that it would have a huge impact on battles. I’m not sure if they have been making it an even bigger mechanic as time has passed, but earlier they were very careful not to introduce [cheap] skills that affect position or movement, but recently I’ve seen more skills doing just that. It will be interesting to see what is the reality here.

Moving on to bigger stuff: the first M in MMO. Guild Wars 1 can be said to be only a MO, but now that Guild Wars 2 is here it gets Massive. The devs have faced an enormous challenge in transforming GW1 to a massively playable state. I have played some tiny amounts of WoW, and was quite pleased with the massive aspect in it, world felt like a much more lively place when another player could be seen doing the same things as you were etc etc. The massive aspect is one of the biggest things I am looking forward to experiencing, but GW1 mechanics might have difficulty directly translating  to a scale like this. There lies the danger of dumbing everything down to a point where old players start to feel uncomfortable about the core mechanics. Widest possible audience is sometimes not what you want.

But will Guild Wars 2 be Guild Wars 2, or just a MMO set in Guild Wars universe? If you ask me, the game mechanics are almost as important as story and setting. Next week will answer so many questions.