This last weekend we had yet another Beta Weekend, Which was the first time in all most two months where we got more than one day to play Guild Wars 2 again. This time I dove pretty deep. I broke all my original rules about not playing Charr or not playing a Ranger. Both I was saving for the actual release. While there were plenty of new additions. Everything from a new interface for the game’s HUD and some new events in some of the race’s starting areas. Also, ArenaNet had an incredible finale event where all players could head over to Ashford Plains and fight some Dragonspawn and even try to take down a large crystal. Along with that if you died during this event you were respawned as Dragonspawn. Which even at low levels was incredibly fun. I took some screen shots of our siege of the major Charr city.
Along with the event changes and the HUD change. They also made some changes to the skill and traits systems. Changing point values and where certain slot skills appeared in the tree. While this was pretty much fine with me; there were some changes that made me have to level up past the point I had originally to get the same skills and in my opinion there are still throw away skills in the base trees. But in the end these changes didn’t seem to effect gameplay too much. It is also my humble opinion that in my starting areas(like the Charr), the enemies are too strong and REQUIRE a group to take them down. This does USUALLY happen but not all ways. The scaling effect for these events need to be seriously looked at, because I often found random dead players all around an area only to discover that they had been killed by some huge group of enemies who they were obviously not ready for.
Guild Wars 2 so far seems like a game about attacking and dealing with VERY LARGE groups of enemies. This is certainly fun and with all the patches they applied this weekend I certainly had a more enjoyable time fighting the large groups in the finale events than I did in the original finale event. However, there was still some dramatic slowdown and their continues to be. This is probably due to the incredibly large number of particle effects popping off everywhere for just about every ability. Which I guess is just a sign that we need to turn our systems to BEST PERFORMANCE rather than BEST APPEARANCE when we play in these large battles. But in PVP, where you would think this would be the most evident, I rarely saw it at all. This must because PVP is on a completely different server and doesn’t have to draw the entire game world. But since everything is instanced. I don’t understand why this is an issue at all. If you are having trouble just create more instances. Right? I dunno, I don’t work with netcode or work as a engineer. It just seems logical.
Back to the game, I was really impressed with most of the changes they have made. Even if the Necromancer is seemingly getting less and less powerful every time I play. I tried the Guardian for the first time this weekend and found the experience incredible. The mix of support and DPS skills was amazing. Also, tried the Ranger for the first. Again, incredibly fun. I have to say that except for the traditional casters; Elementalist, Necromancer, and Mesmer. Everyone else seems to be finely tuned beasts as far as class balance goes. The casters seem broken. I often feel that I’m not doing enough damage and have no way to get out of trouble once I get into it. Some abilities like Phoenix for the Elementalist are great but they don’t heal for enough and take too long to cast. Playing a Ranger in PVP, I would often dominate casters and then be backstabbed by them as they respawned. I rarely felt that the battles between the Ranger and any caster class were fair.
Finally, for all the criticism I’ve had for this game, I REALLY love playing it and as much as I wanted to limit myself so that a lot of things would be fresh for launch; I really couldn’t help myself most of the time. The Charr area, while difficult, is one of the most interesting and exciting starting areas I’ve played so far. Also, the Stories in the Charr area are especially good and probably the most developed and true to world of any of the starting zones. I would rank Norn right under that. The more of the Norn story I see the more I love it. I have to really hand it to the people who created both areas they are excellent. The Norn is STILL the most balanced of the areas; but the Charr is definitely the coolest. I would encourange anyone who hasn’t pre-purchased Guild Wars 2 to do so. This is definitely going to be the premiere MMO experience for the next few years. Everything from the graphics to the gameplay make this a truly next generation MMO.
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