I believe the very first time I saw any of Guild Wars 2 was PAX 2010 as a streamed from booth video. I was a pretty big fan of the original Guild Wars. But in the end, I found that I liked the multiplayer far more than the PVE game. Especially as I approached MAX level. But Guild Wars #1 came out in 2005 and everything that they made as far as expansions had to fit into that. Which severely limited the game. At one point I could run Guild Wars Nightfall on my laptop and listen to itunes at the same time while I had Tweetdeck open. Guild Wars 2 is definitely a MODERN MMO. With modern graphics and mechanics to go along with it.
This last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were the first days of the First Closed Beta Weekend(which consisted mostly of folks that pre-purchased the game, got a code from PAX East, and press). So of the three races available for this week; I played the Norn and the Human. I was not going to play a Charr; as I’m saving that for when the game actually comes out. When you start the game one the first thing you will be asked to do is pick your server which cannot be changed(this wasn’t the case during the beta weekend for obvious reasons). Then you are asked to make your character. The developers smartly gave the player many, many options in this area. But not so many that it created completely terrible looking characters. I know a lot of people like funny looking characters running around. But personally, anything that looks that god awful is pretty hard to stomach if your constantly watching it go walk by freak show style(see DC Universe Online, Champions Online, and Aion). After you’ve chosen the look for your character; you are asked some very specific questions about your character. Things like,:”how do you solve problems?” You then pick from: a)with violence, b)with intelligence, or c) with charm. This seems to effect some of the under the hood starting numbers for your character. But these questions, not that one in particular; but these sorts of questions, can effect what your “personal” story consists of. This can be anything from the kinds of friends you have, to you’re the NPC you turn your quests into. etc… This is very interesting considering that most of the dialog that matters takes place in screen filling dialogue events. Where both sides are voiced. There aren’t usually choices here. But when you reach the screen back in the game proper you are sometimes given a choice as to how you complete a certain quest chain. This is certainly interesting, even if the demeanor of your character is pretty much set by those opening questions you had during character creation. Unlike Star Wars Old Republic.
This “personal story” is a completely separately instanced part of the game. Much like Star Wars the Old Republic, it is by and large separate from anything you’ll be doing in the public part of the game. The places might be somewhat the same; but the personal story usually takes place off to the side in some building or area that everyone else either doesn’t have access to or very limited access to. Much like in Old Republic when your class could go down that hall that no one else could. From what I’ve heard from others and experienced for my self, the personal story seems to be kind of tuned to either be incredibly hard for one player or just an OK challenge for two or more. This is pretty funny considering, it’s your personal story… But for some reason the developer felt like kicking your butt and making sure that you play the game the right way. Because if you don’t, or god-forbid, you make some mistakes your going to die. And when you die you can retry the instance. Well for your sake, I hope the instance is multi-tiered because if it isn’t your just starting from the beginning again. This particular thing never happened to me, but I’m told there is a particular part in one of the Charr personal stories that if you happened to spec wrong; you might end up not being able to get through it alone or at the suggested level. That is after all an option, the way I played the personal story parts; was that I would do everything else and then do them. Which seemed to work out the best.
Guild Wars 2 is one of the first MMOs that MIGHT actually have a fantasy story you care about. Might care about because, I think it depends a great deal on which race you play. To me, it’s amazing how different each race’s area is from another. This certainly isn’t new to the genre. Certainly, in World of Warcraft; the race you choose does affect your experience for the first 10-20 levels. The funny thing about Guild Wars 2 is that leveling is quite a bit slower than in World of Warcraft. So your starting area will actually dictate quite a lot of your experience for the first 4-8 hours depending on your play style and character class(as opposed to Warcraft where post Burning Crusade starting areas usually took a total of around 2-3 hours). There definitely are some reused enemies like bandits, Skritt(rat men), and Wurms of various colors. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But this is where the similarities stop.
Between the Norn and the Humans I saw practically nothing repeated either thematically or literally. Which is wonderful, but I wonder how interested the average gamer is going to be in playing anything in the Human starting areas or human cities. I know Humans are pretty and familiar but I dunno; there is this big hole in the middle of the human capital city for some reason; I never did find out exactly why. Also, the Humans lands are being attacked by Centaurs and while that sounds cool and is cool for the first few battles. After awhile, I just started saying, “Centaurs! Why does it all ways have to be Centaurs?”
They are a little annoying as enemies. As they get to higher levels, they get even more annoying. But I suppose I understand, considering in the story the Humans are for some reason at war with the Centaurs. But by the third or fourth time you fight them in a big battle; you just wish you could march on their capital and kill them all. Which is perhaps the point, but still…
There ARE other things to do. Every area you go into has two major types of quests. The first are world events that happen whether you are there to complete them or not. The other are more specific types of events that require certain prerequisites before they begin. Such as clearing a road of enemies so a trade route might open up a quest that asks you to escort a merchant down the road. If you don’t clear the road, the merchant never appears. Sometimes these things are linked; sometimes(rarely that I’ve seen); they can work independently of each other. Both of these quest types are incredibly fun and can be taken part in by any random passerby. Which makes them even more fun. If I’m out there killing something and someone comes along and helps me kill it. I’m STOKED! Why? Because I get just as much experience and just as much loot as I would have doing it alone; but it’s EASIER! What’s also fun about both of these quests is that the participants get Karma. Karma is basically just like PVP points in other MMOs. You use these points to buy SPECIAL ITEMS that are usually sold by the quest giver of whatever events you participate in. These are usually especially good items, like a sword with really nice magic effects on it. Or a trinket with an awesome buff. In fact, the only REAL ways to get trinkets are from this or perhaps buying one on the Auction House. So these are all great. No one is telling me that I MUST do this or I MUST do that. Except they kind of are…. If you don’t do at least 4/5 of these events your going to end up being too under leveled to do the “personal story” quests and not be able to move anything along. But that still leaves the average person with some choices and I’m sure this opens up later on.
One of the other big changes to Guild Wars 2 from other MMOs was supposed to be getting rid of the whole sacred trinity thing(Tanking, Healing, DPS). Which usually works really well in other games(as long as people want to play those classes, SWTOR and WoW players can attest to this). I played a Necromancer for my Human and a Warrior for my Norn. Both of these classes played quite differently. My Norn for example, had access to every weapon in the game except daggers(which seems strange). She was even able to use guns, bows, and crossbows. Which, She ended up being very good with. I was very hard pressed to go back to using my melee weapons when I could just stand outside of the ring of death and shoot things. Of course, that often meant that those things would just come up to me and start hitting me. But unlike a normal DPS player; I didn’t have to run away, I just proceeded to keep shooting them. But this time at point blank range. Which was fun as well, even if only a handful of skills allowed for this. When I was playing her in melee mode, I was usually wielding a very large hammer or sword. In either case, I would do some direct damage to the thing I was hitting but I also had a nice “aggro” area of effect skill that would collect guys and send them after me. But again, unlike a normal tank; I wasn’t just trying to survive. I could dish out enough damage to kill just about anything that I fought at least one on one. If I fought more than four guys at a time and they just so happened to be my level. I was usually in trouble. But in the Norn Lands, that just doesn’t happen too much. If your out there killing a group of enemies at least two or three more folks will show up and kill them with you.
Which means that someone, usually, ends up needing reviving. Which is also fine, because every character can revive. Just they don’t do it particularly well. Which is why, I’m guessing that they make the game so difficult so that at some point you will experience watching one person trying to revive you and it taking like 40 seconds. 40 seconds is a long time to watch someone kneeling over you and little green numbers to pop out while color is filling in on your life bar. What this means is that every time I’m walking around a battlefield; the first thing I do if there are no monsters trying to kill me, is revive all of the fallen. Which I’m happy to say other people do as well. If you do it often enough, you even get an XP reward for it. Fortunately you can prevent your own death by achieving your second chance. What that means is that right before you die you are given a chance to kill what is killing you for a sliver health to get you off the ground and away from the enemies. This would be fine except that usually the reason that you died, is usually standing over you pummeling you while your doing this. So unless you died just a last moment before you killed them; you probably will have a hard time with this. I could see this working better in a raid situation where you kill an add to get you up so you can heal before going back to fighting the boss. In most other circumstances however, it’s kind of a luck of the draw kind of thing.
All of these mechanics and options certainly give the soloing character, in this case; more flexibility and even if playing in a traditional style isn’t as effective as in the previous games. The character, at least in this case can both Tank and DPS. However, what this doesn’t do for the character is give them a clear role in a raid or even a world event. In the hairiest world events(like killing a group of 20-40 enemies, yeah they send that many); I usually grabbed my big hammer and pummeled enemies into oblivion while the Elementalists, Mesmers, and Rangers shot them in the back. But if something was more unpredictable. Like an event in an area, where it was hard to tell where the enemies would be coming from or what types of enemies they would be. I was back there with the casters and ranged folks shooting my huge gun or my longbow. I was just as effective in both capacities, not better as one or the other. That’s fine, for the Warrior who is heavily armored and specs a little precision to go with toughness/power/etc… But when we move to the Necromancer things change a little.
My Necromancer was Human and the Human starting area was quite different from the Norn(as I mentioned earlier). The Human areas are very spread out(even more than the Norn) and people tend to move in big groups from one event area to the next. Which means that the average player might think they are doing all right for the first two or three levels when in fact; they are not. It’s easy to feel good about your class when you aren’t responsible for actually killing ANYTHING ALONE! Even in your main human story for the first 2 levels, it’s unlikely that you will have to kill anything alone until it’s just a little too late to fix some of the problems you’ve created for yourself. Mostly undergearing and not kiting enough.
Necromancers are described by the in-game text tip as Healer/Summoners. Which in most games would mean that they are a pet class and some of their powers can be used to heal. It would be like a Priest and a Warlock had a baby to put it in WoW terms. The problem here is that, Necromancers are not exactly that. They are actually DPS/Summoners/Healers. Most of their abilities, and I’ve used all most every skill that the game would let me by level 9(Which is quite a few actually) and none do DIRECT healing. Many have healing side effects, like this spell will do X Damage, put on Y DOT, and then do 1% healing on the caster. Which is fine, but I’m not standing out in a field keeping people alive, I’m killing the thing and if your standing next to me you might live longer, either because I killed the thing before it could kill you or because you would have died from 1% damage more. But it’s not like I’m a Druid, Priest, or Paladin(WoW). However, lest you think that the Necromancer is a DPS, I will tell you no. The Elementalist and the Mesmer are much better at DPS than the Necromancer is. She cannot tank, because she has many pets but they don’t live very long. So what does she do well? Not much… She CAN DPS and she CAN Tank but only if there is no one else around and as long as someone is there to kill anything else that the Necromancer isn’t focused on. Because she can definitely kill ONE THING at a time, REALLY well. Or kill a group of things OVER TIME really well. But if that group of things reaches her; she is all most certainly dead. Even Death Shroud, which looks like an “Oh Shit! The Monsters are going to kill me” button doesn’t make you invincible for the duration of it. It only increases your damage, gives you MORE health, and keeps you from being pinned to one spot. Which are all great, except that it really cuts down on how much it is used. I normally am kiting some creature all around, WoW Ranger style. Or dropping sigil traps on the ground so enemies run into them; Wow Ranger/Mage style. In fact, there is a ranger class in this game and both classes seem to play surprisingly similarly. Except that even at low levels, Ranger pets are more resilient and have more options than anything your liking to summon before level 10.
Don’t get me wrong, however. I really DO like the Necromancer as a class. But she must be carefully specced and for some reason she must also be carefully geared. Doing both of those things will help her be better DPS and maybe even a better Tank, probably eventually a better Healer. Not that with Guardians around we need better Tanks or with Elementalists around we need better DPS. The Healing aspect can be explained by saying that really high level skills and traits(by this I mean all the stuff that comes after level 13) and can be turned to healing rather than just DPS. Which is fine, except that if I’m a Healer/Summoner; That seems like a little late to get into the practice of keeping people alive all of a sudden. While on the grand scale the first even 20 levels of a game like this are nothing. It makes it incredibly difficult to understand your character if for the first 15 levels you do mostly one thing(DPS) and then are asked to do the exact opposite(Healing). This is very much unlike something like Warhammer Online where the healers got power to do DPS with their healing. Which blended both together so that the healers were constantly thinking of both. But I’m guessing the developers are just giving us this option to play around with Necromancers. They probably, except in rare cases; will be nothing more than DPS that can heal a little. Which is fine because every raid needs lots of healing. When the game goes live, I’m sure I’ll be rolling a Necromancer. Just not a Human one.
I played the two characters I mentioned, both to level 9. Which is right before the traits begin to start affecting things. I did play some PVP with more characters and while I didn’t try out any of the Necromancer’s healing skills my Fully Maxed Necromancer seemed to be mostly a DPS and kiting beast. I played a Human Engineer which was a lot of fun, guns are very good in this game. All most game-breakingly so. My guess would be that before launch all the guns in the game get their stats nerfed. I also played a Human Elementalist and a Human Mesmer. Both were effective caster classes and were a lot of fun to play. Nothing really struck me as being unexpected or crazy. Except how much I loved playing PVP in this game(NCsoft does AWESOME PVP). I only say unexpected, because judging from the PVE it seemed like the fights would boil down to a lag battle. Where the people who had the best connections would win. But considering that most of the battles were small and the maps spread out, this usually wasn’t an issue.
In wrapping up, Guild Wars 2 is an amazing game and I can’t wait to play the other races when the next beta weekend hits. Also, I can’t wait to see what the developers do with the MAC-LOAD TONAGE of beta data they got from this beta weekend. The game mostly worked but some things were definitely just straight up broken. The in-game store, the auction house, and a few instanced story quests were just not working properly. But that’s why developers have betas and this weekend definitely gave the Guild Wars 2 team something to chew on come next week and even right now apparently. Trying to get everyone in to play was their main concern and even with the sometimes infrequent updates and miscommunications; overall they preformed admirably. I certainly have no fear going forward that this will be a great MMORPG. I can’t wait to play as much of it as the developers will let me in the coming weeks and months before the game launches sometime later this year. Go get your copy pre-purchased. You better hurry I hear they are running out(really, I’m not kidding)…
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