Guild Wars 2 and GWJ: Launch Date And Final Beta Weekend

My random thoughts on the beta with no attempt to organize them:

My only real problem with the game is the lack of feedback I was receiving. I chose to play strictly as a Mesmer to try and learn it as well as possible and possibly eliminate it as the main class I intend to start the game with. I chose to build defensive and buff oriented as it didn't seem like I was ever doing a whole lot of damage (a warrior 2 levels below me would walk up and crush a mob that I'd been playing with for 5 or 10 seconds) so survival and trickery seemed mandated.

Unfortunately, I was never really sure just how effective any of my buffs were. I could spread my buffs to anyone around me, but I wasn't sure how many people got them, and if it mattered. I certainly noticed the haste buff, but it was quite short lived. Indeed, none of the buffs seemed to last long at all even choosing as many buff lengthening traits as possible. Did that regen help anyone in combat? I don't know. Maybe when things become a bit more organized and we're not just zerging everywhere I can actually observe things a bit better.

When I threw up my area of effect staff spell and got 12 combo messages in a siege, that was great. Except I have no idea what any of those combos were/did. Still, I comboed!

It was a lot of fun escaping from multiple opponents in PvP, and I always enjoyed playing my druid in WoW and just frustrating my opponents to no end. The Mesmer felt a lot like that. I felt pretty useless in a siege though; frequently my illusions wouldn't explode on a gate, and that was about the only damage I was doing. Without that it was 12 dmg, 11 dmg, etc. When the illusions worked they'd each hit for 35-40 and at least felt like I did something to the gate; hoping that was just a beta issue.

Overall though, I'm pretty sure I AM the target audience for this game, just need to find exactly what role I want to play in it.

Anyway, think I've eliminated Mesmer for my primary class though it could easily be my first alt. Now I just need 7 more weekend events to evaluate all the other classes!

I having an odd time trying to figure out in my head how I like GW2. I think it's the mix of trying to see what issues need to be fixed (performance with lots of characters mostly), trying to evaluate classes for play in the final release, and trying to have fun with the thing I've already paid for.

I find myself thinking with all the classes that I ended up playing okay, but not with full effectiveness from my input. It's going to take some time for me to get used to all the things I need to do, and how to change my build for any situation the game throws at me. It seems everyone has a wide range of skills and tools to use, rather than being limited, but just need to access them. Like GW1, you need to watch what's going on and investigate what killed you, adaptability is king.

It's certainly different to GW1 and most of everything else, but that's what they've claimed for ages.

edit: I've just realised that I now have to find something else to play to fill my time. 48 hours every month (maybe) isn't enough.

I had a lot of fun with the beta. As others have said, the immense variety in how you can approach the combat is really astounding. I loved the Elementalist for that exact reason.

PvE encounter, group of 5:

1. Fire: Meteor -> Rush in with Flame Burst, casting a fireball as the meteors land -> Lava Font -> Switch to
2. Water: Healing rain, whether necessary or not -> Ice Spike & Arcane Wave (Utility), which should do it.

Or I could do something entirely different. And this was level 8.

Scratched wrote:

performance with lots of characters mostly

Assuming you mean framerate, the beta being cpu-bound and supporting only 1 core, I don't think that's going to be a problem.

Did anyone see in LA the 6 asura portals under construction in eastern ward? I guess that's some planning for an expansion later.

I'm really curious on the "dynamic world" aspects. Did anyone experience this part of the game and have stories to tell?

karmajay wrote:

I'm really curious on the "dynamic world" aspects. Did anyone experience this part of the game and have stories to tell?

I didn't see any big chains, but I only got to level 8. Some people got the shadow behemoth to happen in the human swamps though.

I ended up playing around with two classes this weekend, Elementalist and Thief.

It seems like it took me a LONG time to figure out how to play the game; I didn't really 'get' it for a long while, and I guess I'm still not sure I do
Once I got it in my head that I could dynamical change party roles, by either changed element or by changing weapon set, I started to really get into the game. GW1 had endless playability for me because of the many skills and skill combinations; if you got bored, just change your build. GW2 doesn't have quite the variety yet (at least not in the beta), instead focusing on the natural flow from situation to situation. For me, anyway, I had to be pretty alert, and I like that. One of the biggest things I had to learn was that it was OK to change skill bars mid battle; in-fact, you kind of have to.

Even in beta, the production quality is fantastic; I love the armor design, landscapes, and races. The localization and voice-acting is way, way improved over GW1. There were several instances where I might be exploring some random house in town, and overhear NPC dialogue that got a laugh. Some funny stuff in there.

I'm looking forward to trying out other classes in future beta weekends, and play with the crafting too.

Was anyone able to train up their weapon skills in WvW? Everytime I tried, they never increased. I had to go to PvE to train them up, then switch back to WvW.

I never found WvW and was looking forward to it. I won one pvp match and lost one. it was okay but a little overwhelming as the pve aspect is overwhelming and then they give you even more skills to choose from.

Necro
- I never could get the hang of him myself. Couldnt get the timing down on when to use what, but saw him in action and do serious damage. Heard a lot of people talking about how OP they were, but if i was using one of my top 3 classes i generally wasnt worried.

Engineer
- Another class i couldnt get the timing down on the skills i'd try. Just didnt gel with me.

My sentiments exactly. My experience with the necro was worsened by the fact that it was the first class I tried. It is not the class to learn the game with. The starter healing skill "blood fiend" is very weak as are the dagger lifetap skills. At early levels at least, you do not want to melee with a necro. The game starts you off with an axe which is what I was leaning towards before the beta. Still, the survivability was frustrating. And it was early beta before people found out you can get serious xp from reviving someone. Hats off to Arenanet for that mechanic.

The engineer was okay with pistol/pistol. It did more damage in practice than it showed in the preview videos. Plus it was very versatile too. I bought the grenade kit and that is a definite no go unless you are in a static group in a support role. All the grenades are ground targeted which is very monotonous if hectic in chaotic situations.

The ranger was fun but not very survivable in melee. The human race gets the choice of a better pet the skale that can heal itself. The bear and the wolf were lackluster and always dying due to aggroing groups. Now while the ranger fairs much better with a ranged weapon, the longbow is the best feel for me despite spending a lot of time with the axe, the two handed sword does a tremendous amount of tightly packed aoe melee damage.

The warrior was very surprising. I was bummed I never found another sword to go sword/sword because I liked the main hand and off hand skills very much. I did also like the mace/sword but I wasn't able to acquire many of the other weapon options available. The warrior did do a LOT of damage.

More on the other classes later...

Tkyl wrote:

Was anyone able to train up their weapon skills in WvW? Everytime I tried, they never increased. I had to go to PvE to train them up, then switch back to WvW.

Weapon skills seem to only increase on kill, so if you do not get credit for the actual kill the weapon will not progress. I had the same issue in on of my story instances because all the npc's would surrender instead of die and I was stuck using skill 1 to whole mission.

I was really happy with the beta weekend overall. This is the PvE MMO I've been wanting for a long time now. I really love how the game encourages you to explore the land. Not only does it have the "collect-a-thon" aspect to hook me, but the leveling down system means there will be areas that will be too tough for you to never but never content that will be too trivial. That is so brilliant. I was having lots of fun going from area to area collecting skill points. I also really like how the game encourages cooperation. You'll get ad-hoc groups just sort of forming and dissipating as you run around, which I find really fun. It also seems like a great game to get in and out of pretty quickly if you don't have much time to play.

The only thing they need to fix is that your party should always go into the same overflow. Right now you can get split up when you zone and that seriously sucks. Beyond that I was more than happy with how much fun the game is.

Didn't do much PvP... I was really struggling with it. Mostly played engineer and it's a fun class but has lots of versatility and I think it's very easy to play ineffectively, especially in PvP. I never felt like I was really contributing to the battles. Also had a really hard time tracking targets, especially once you got more than a handful of people in one combat. Later I tried a guardian but never went into PvP, but I feel like that may have been an easier class for me to grasp PvP with.

For those using characters with ranged abilities, I think the "quick targeting" option in the settings is a must. Instead of triggering your skill and then having to click on the ground to set your target spot, it just targets where your cursor is when you trigger the ability. I was having a lot of fun with the engineer's grenade kit that way.

Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

For those using characters with ranged abilities, I think the "quick targeting" option in the settings is a must. Instead of triggering your skill and then having to click on the ground to set your target spot, it just targets where your cursor is when you trigger the ability. I was having a lot of fun with the engineer's grenade kit that way.

I've been using that as well. The only downside is that you can't then click on the ability with the mouse. Well, you can, but it will just cast the spell at your feet.

Tkyl wrote:

Was anyone able to train up their weapon skills in WvW? Everytime I tried, they never increased. I had to go to PvE to train them up, then switch back to WvW.

Yes, I took a level 3 elementalist there that I had barely unlocked any skills on, and while it was slow, I did unlock several new skills. And damn was elementalist fun in WvW... Great havoc creator from afar, but damn I was in trouble when an enemy put a cripple on me. It didn't help I barely had any skills unlocked, so no run speed or condition removal.

I did several hours of WvW yesterday and it was incredibly fun. I'm not much of a PvPer, but I did enjoy RvR in DAOC and the stuff in WAR, and this felt very reminiscent of them both. I was mostly just following groups of people around, and didn't spend any time figuring out supply and stuff, so I imagine it will be even better when there is a modicum of organization in play as well.

I guess I am going to chalk my frustrations with the teen guardian experience I wrote about earlier to beta balance. Apparently many people have noted there is an issue with content scaling. That is, if you get a lot of people together for an event, it just keeps inflating the NPCs' levels up and up, to the point where their damage is way overscaled for the players. There are also rumors that it is not properly downscaling if people leave the area or whatever, so the remaining players are even more screwed. Anyway, looks like there is room and time for tweaking. It still feels like ranged can get away with a lot more than melee (ie, not die near as much), though I guess that makes some sense... It still feels a little unfair to melee in big fights though. Small scale PvE content, melee definitely owns. I didn't try WvW with melee yet.

I had no idea you could right click crafting materials in your bag and send them to the bank! That is awesome. Crafting seemed fun from the little I tried it, but armor and weaponsmithing seemed really slow to start off with, I had collected a lot less metal ore to work with compared with cloth and leather. And the components needed a lot of ore. It was trivial to quest for a bit, then head to the crafting trainers at around level 4 or 5, learn tailoring, and in less than a minute you'd have 4x 8 slot bags. The equivalent in armorsmithing, boxes, each needed 10 copper bars! That is an insane amount, relatively speaking, in my opinion. Maybe I didn't find enough copper nodes compared to other people, I dunno.

Overall, though, I can not wait to play more. This was an absolute blast. I see myself playing for a long, long while. I think next BWE I'm going to try a warrior more and see how I like that flavor of melee.

My characters at weekend's end:
12 Norn Guardian
9 Human Ranger (wow did the cat pet suck! I would revive it only to have it end up dead 5 seconds later...)
7 Norn Elementalist (leveled from 3-7 in WvW)
5 Human Warrior

Tried a Charr several times over the weekend, but every time on Jade Quarry the tutorial was borked and could not get into the gate to fight Duke Barradin.

Tkyl wrote:
Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

For those using characters with ranged abilities, I think the "quick targeting" option in the settings is a must. Instead of triggering your skill and then having to click on the ground to set your target spot, it just targets where your cursor is when you trigger the ability. I was having a lot of fun with the engineer's grenade kit that way.

I've been using that as well. The only downside is that you can't then click on the ability with the mouse. Well, you can, but it will just cast the spell at your feet.

I'd go on their forums and register that as a bug/suggestion. When you click on the button it should be obvious that's not the intended effect, so change the quick targetting to only happen when a skill is triggered by keystroke.

That is good to know. I will have to try click targeting. That would make the grenade kit engineer a lot more fun.

The guardian was another surprise class that was more fun and useful in haphazard grouping than I expected. They are definitely sturdy even when you have absolutely no idea what you are doing. The shield skills didn't click with me and I had just found a torch when I switched to another class. The mace skills are terrific and I can't wait to unlock the torch skills. (as well as all the other weapon combinations) Playing this class, I blinked and I was level 5. It was much more of a struggle with the other classes while figuring out the lay of the land.

But now we get to the awesome sauce classes...

The thief I knew I loved in less than 2 minutes. I got to level 3 and put it aside for the rest of the beta. The dashing back and forth with trading off stabs and pistol shots was so amazingly fun, it made the ranger's like abilities seem very broken. (except for the hawk wing gliding leap to you enemy; I think its a greatsword or sword skill and it never got old on my ranger)

The ice elementalist both scepter and staff was fantastic. The elementalist lifetapped way better than the necro and from range! The staff skill geyser was terrific and I am sure with traits, its short comings (duration, range) will become boosts. The scepter skill that conjured a crystal that exploded after 2 seconds was very nice too. That and the fire skill dragon's tooth were very satisfying with a,"wait for it, wait for it, BOOM!"

I bought the elemental summoning skill and so far it is as lack luster as the basic ranger pets if not moreso.

The lightning skills were amazing both scepter and staff as were the fire skills. I was just starting to unlock the earth skills as there aren't available to you until level 6 when I decided to move onto another character.

Scratched wrote:
Tkyl wrote:
Dreaded Gazebo wrote:

For those using characters with ranged abilities, I think the "quick targeting" option in the settings is a must. Instead of triggering your skill and then having to click on the ground to set your target spot, it just targets where your cursor is when you trigger the ability. I was having a lot of fun with the engineer's grenade kit that way.

I've been using that as well. The only downside is that you can't then click on the ability with the mouse. Well, you can, but it will just cast the spell at your feet.

I'd go on their forums and register that as a bug/suggestion. When you click on the button it should be obvious that's not the intended effect, so change the quick targetting to only happen when a skill is triggered by keystroke.

Ya you lose the targeting symbol when thats turned on so easy to do.

I'll add my thoughts. I chose to focus on one class only and got a Norn Mesmer till lvl 15.

Loved
- The many skills that each weapon gives you. Initally the huge number of skills etc is really interesting. Loved the 2H Sword abilities.
- The personal story was a nice touch even if some were really short and simple. The story did get better as it went along.
- The World events were actually interesting and there are so many. Also, thye scale! So at level 15, I went back to doing the level 3 events and they were still tough! I was actually lowered in level and gained pretty good XP gain as a result.

Did not Like
- Finally figured out that weapon swapping is necessary for max illusion/phantasm generation. I might have picked the wrong class to start off with. With the Mesmer, I I had absolutely no idea how to apply traits. What's condition damage? None of this is clear and the Mesmer is not an easy class to start with.
- World Events. At level 15 I was stuck. I had completed most all the world events in the "foothills?" but when I went to the next zone, I was way too low in level to be there. So was my only option to grind world events till I gained more levels?
- The Crafting. Oh god the crafting. Tailoring was good cos you can create an 8 slot bag. That aside, it takes way too much resources to craft and since recipes are not automatic, you actually find much better equipment from mobs. In the end, unless the really high levels offer awesome crafting items, I don't see a use for crafting.
- The Trading post. I know this is the Guild Wars method, but ... did not totally understand this system then and I still don't compeltely understand the system now. Not a fan of it.
- Armor repair. Dying causing armor to break. There's no degrading system that I could see, it simply breaks. This is a huge pain. Especially since I was in an instance for my story line and essentially stuck.

Overall I hit a point at about level 12 when I kept dying on my story line. And had to grind 2 more levels + get better items before I could defeat the first true boss in my story. It was really tough.

I think the problem was the Mesmer class itself. I briefly tried out the Elementalist for 3 levels and wow, in terms of dmg output, the Mesmer is really lacking. And I guess I didn't totally get the whole illusion and boon/conditional dmg concept. Next time I'll play the Necro or Elementalist, which I think has a more straight forward gameplay.

Overall I had fun and don't regret the pre-purchase. I loved the daily/monthly and etc achievements. The really good part is that since there is no monthly subscription, the 3 month rule does not apply.

Something else I realised I liked: No quest log besides the personal story. The lack of a traditional cycle of harvesting quests, working through the to-do list, and handing them in was quite a nice change. They give you the tools (scouts, map) to find stuff to do though.

@emyln

Conditions are dots or debuffs: burn, bleed, poison, crippled, weakness, chilled, etc.

Boons are buffs: swiftness, regen, protection, retaliation, fury?, etc.

This is going to be the complicated nuances of GW2 combat. A lot of classes rely on creating conditions on enemies and then having skills that do extra damage per condition. Or they remove conditions from themselves and their allies or turn allies conditions into boons for you or both you and them. There are also skills that transfer yours or allies conditions to your pet or pet abilities that remove conditions every 10 seconds or so.

Guardians are powerful enough without these abilities but it looks like you won't be using them to their fullest potential without delving into these skills.

Mesmers and probably necromancers seem to really need these from the start. I think a lot of their summons are very neutered because they would be too strong when they get these skills if they were decent from the start.

I played PvE almost exclusively (I had one PvP match, which was fun, but lasted maybe fifteen minutes. I joined one in progress). I played a Mesmer, and made it to level 13.

My impressions were as follows:

  • It seems like the vast majority of any kind of tutorial system was wholly absent from the game at this point. That could just be a matter of it being beta, and I hope so, because it took me until about halfway through level 11 to figure out what I was supposed to be doing with the combat.
  • I am in love with the complete absence of fetch questing which relies entirely on specific mobs and drops. I am also in love with the heart questing hub idea and the random world events. I ran back and forth between hearts rather frequently, doing one task or another, almost the entire time. I love the fact that anything that requires you to grab something and bring it back (e.g. the fetch quests in the first zones in WoW if you pick a human, where you have to pick up stuff randomly, and then encounter a mob, kill it, and move on with the quest), its a group effort with a timer, which eliminates the need for you to wait for respawns of the items, or compete with other players.
  • I did not really discover professions until way later, and am sad that I didn't get to mess with them more. I hated professions in every other MMO, and I really wanted to see what they were doing with them.
  • Because of server issues, and other issues, it was really difficult to form a group to do the instances, therefore almost ALL of my instance experiences were exceedingly difficult, as I was soloing them. Plus, I think they were all story and character-specific. I'm not sure how many other folks were following my exact quest line, but the details of mine were that I was of common birth and valued dignity, and as such, I was helping the Seraphs track down these bandits who kept getting freed from prison, with an apparent power struggle between the Seraphs and the Ministry Guard (Commoners and Nobles, respectively). It seemed like a slow start to the story, but I am hopeful that it will get better (it certainly seemed like it was getting more interesting as things progressed.
  • Death. Death death death. Lots of death. Way too much death. When I expressed this, people playing other classes were in shock. I got the hang of things once I started realizing that more illusions = better self-heals, but ultimately, any group of mobs within 4 levels of me was basically death. Not good, especially if other classes don't experience this, especially if they want to end the holy trinity of DPS/Tank/Heals.
karmajay wrote:

I'm really curious on the "dynamic world" aspects. Did anyone experience this part of the game and have stories to tell?

The most memorable for me was I was walking alone through a human outpost near a small, deep lake. I was walking around an area that I was a bit underleveled for so I was kinda out of my league compared to the mobs and there weren't many other players around. I walked over to talk to an npc standing on a dock waving for help. She said something about wanting to go fishing but she needed grubs from a cave. When I chose to help it started a new dynamic event that everyone in the vicinity could see and come help. I followed the npc across a large field populated by cows and moa birds until we got to a cave. There was a warning sign outside the cave: TROLL CAVE. Anyway, I killed a few grubs in the cave entranceway, which filled up a meter for the overall quest progress. I noticed a small statue in the back of the cave that said Troll statue or something (I dont remember exactly what it was) but when I picked it up it a 20ft Troll boss spawned and killed my warrior in 2 hits. A new event started to kill the rampaging troll. There was nobody around to resurrect me so I spawned back at the outpost and ran back to the troll cave; at this point the troll was out in the field killing all the cows. I tried to take on the troll again by myself but got curb stomped. After that I chose to just go finish collecting grubs; after collecting enough I walked back to the lake with the npc which started a new quest phase to kill some barracudas in the lake. I didn't wait around to finish either of those events, I fast traveled back to a more level appropriate area instead.

At that point I was still really new at the game and getting pretty discouraged with the difficulty. The way combat works in Guild Wars 2, especially melee combat was a slow burn. Playing as a hammer/rifle warrior, once I hit level 12 or so, everything started to 'click'. I had some good utility skills, I stopped just spamming my attack skills, I started moving while hitting the enemy with the auto-attack skill 1 and using my other weapon skills more strategically to weaken, knockdown then cripple and knockback. If I started taking too much damage I would roll back and switch to rifle and use my healing skill. There is a definite fluidity to the combat that is a lot different than any game I've played before. But once I had my flow the game suddenly became brilliant and became immensely satisfying. A month is a long time to wait until the next beta.... I'm already getting fidgety.

NSMike wrote:

[*]I did not really discover professions until way later, and am sad that I didn't get to mess with them more. I hated professions in every other MMO, and I really wanted to see what they were doing with them.

You can only learn 2 crafting professions. However if you choose to drop one and learn another, you will not forget the progress you made, you will however have to pay to get it back. So in theory you can learn all crafts to max.

I did Tailoring and Cooking.
You start out as a novice and need to get 100 crafting levels to move to the next step. Each crafting earns you some XP. You also start out with very basic recipes. For tailoring you could refine the linen/leather that you salvage. Which is then used to make components which is then used by an item recipe.

You start of knowing about 2-4 recipes. Beyond that, you need to experiment or find people who sell these recipes . I refined about 90 pieces of linen and got about 11/100 for my Novice Tailor. Getting those 90 linen took me till level 15, salvaging all my drops. And by then the 4 recipes I could craft were obsolete for my level. Also, I had not met a single merchant or anyone that sold Tailoring recipes.

Cooking. When you take cooking, there's a warning that it is more expensive that other craftings. This was not a lie. There was only 1 recipe I could make. To get more recipes you need to experiment or buy them from a seller some where. I found 2-3 new food recipes at the level 10-15 heart quest persons. They all cost Karma to purchase, while the ingredients cost coin to purchase. Bottomline I don't see this as a benefiting you as you level. In its current state it seems more like something to do once you hit the higher levels. Cos they are not lying it costs A LOT.

PS. Did anyone else find the 10s to purchase the Adept Trait book really expensive? I had to sell off a whole lot of my resources (all my iron ore and a few other stuff) to raise that 10s.

emyln wrote:

- World Events. At level 15 I was stuck. I had completed most all the world events in the "foothills?" but when I went to the next zone, I was way too low in level to be there. So was my only option to grind world events till I gained more levels?

Just go to another race's starting area and work through the quests there. You level down so all the content will still be engaging, but you still earn exp at a good rate so it's a fun way to keep leveling while seeing new content. Much better than grinding the same few events over and over.

I had a blast this weekend. It’s been quite some time since a game has sucked me in so much that I can’t stop thinking about getting back into it and anticipating what I will be doing.

I first started as a norn warrior and kept mostly to PvE with this class. In the beginning, I continued the trend that everyone else seems to have experienced in dying…a lot. Whether it was stuff in the open world or story instances, I was dying quite often. It almost discouraged me into quitting, but I persevered and started to get better as I focused more on learning the game mechanics. By the end, I was dying a lot less, started using abilities much more intelligently and was happy to find that I needed to group up more often than solo (which I like in my multiplayer experiences). I bet things will get tuned down due to beta response or may have been set more difficult to slow player progression down. I really liked the fact that there isn’t kill stealing, no NPCs with question marks over their head that I need to rubberband around, or blocked content due to some earlier pre-requisite that I missed. All the cities I visited were unique and had great set pieces that set them apart from each other.

After doing that I made a necromancer and did PvP only. Never got into WvW due to the never ending queue and I’m sure players squatting in there that didn’t want to give up their spot. The class itself was quite different from my warrior and my theory-crafted condition necro didn’t fare as well as I would have liked it to. Cooldowns on key abilities really slowed it down and condition duration didn’t seem long enough to be that useful. It was fun putting Signet of Spite (give player every condition) and then following up with Epidemic (spread all conditions on target to players nearby). The elite skill was hilarious. I chose the plague form which had a pulse PBAoE damage, would apply a condition you selected in the action bar (posion, weakness, snare), and boosted my HP an extra 16K. I’d hit that thing and charge into the clumped up range groups, causing them to run away in panic and break their assault. At the end, I realized I probably should have been weapon swapping with a staff more to get extra conditions. Death shroud is also quite powerful if used in certain situations.

I didn’t try crafting. It appeared very similar to Aion, which needed lots of materials and focused on crafting crits for superior items. The best part was, like questing items, I saw multiple players use a single resource node and it remained available to me for interaction.

Can’t wait till release and get some GWJ groups together for PvP, skill point gathering, and perhaps doing an event night similar to the leveling groups.

I was only able to play on Sunday so I didn't get too much time with the game, but it's more or less what I expected. I was pretty keen on the Ranger going into the beta, and it didn't disappoint. The longbow was the most fun, shortbow was ok but didn't seem as versatile. I thought sword + warhorn was going to be a good combo, but I felt pretty squishy in melee and the warhorn was a little underwhelming. The bird attack looks cool, but the cooldown and cast time make it difficult to use in a way that felt effective.

I also spent some time with the Necromancer and was pleasantly surprised. The staff felt fun and effective, kiting enemies through a minefield of marks was very satisfying. Scepter + dagger was another good combo, with four abilities that apply conditions plus one that gets extra damage and life force for each condition on an enemy. Death shroud is a nice panic button, being able to swap your health bar for a life force bar is really helpful when you're getting low on health and your heal's on cooldown.

I really like the dynamic events. A couple times I started an escort event with no one around, but as the npc moved down the road more and more people would join in until we had a huge warband plowing along. Some of the big boss events are pretty cool too, I did one where this Svanir shaman guy opened a ton of portals that spawned in tons of elementals, once we cleared them and killed the portals we had to fight the shaman in this huge epic boss fight. I was a little underleveled for the encounter so I ended up graveyard zerging a bit, by the end of the event I was completely naked because all my armour broke.

That is one of the nice things about the gathering and interactive quest objectives. The crab traps, dam leaks, fish, don't disappear when other people grab it before you do. For most things, even if you are 5th in line you can interact with the quest node without waiting for it to respawn. Of course once you use it, you have to wait for it to respawn but respawns aren't triggered by another player getting to it before you.

The mesmer and necro were more slightly more frustratingly frail than the other classes. However, my experience with the other classes was also: death, death, death.

I think overcrowding caused a lot of issues with chaotic clumping of dynamic spawns. There were these berserker whirlwind two handed sword guys that clumped into groups of 3+. When they all whirlwinded every 5 seconds, it would wipe everyone. Sometimes the pack pathing would jerk around 90 degrees in an instant. So if you were trying to flank the blinked-in horde, you died almost imediately.

Most of my classes had trouble with some parts of some story missions. My necro was the only class that encountered a part of her story mission that she could not pass. I quit before leveling up more to pass it.

One of the other areas where even if you grasp the class's mechanics, if you switch to another weapon to unlock its skills, you will die a lot getting skills 2-5.

fangblackbone wrote:

My necro was the only class that encountered a part of her story mission that she could not pass. I quit before leveling up more to pass it.

Yeah, I hit a point like that too (human necromancer, poor origin, quest to rescue your friend from his hideout). I think parts of it were bugged though, whenever I tried to leave the house a group of bandits would spawn right on top of me. If I died and chose to restart from a checkpoint it would put me outside the house and immediately spawn another group of bandits on top of me. Sometimes the first group wouldn't despawn either so I'd end up being insta-killed by a giant group of mobs as soon as I loaded in. After a few tries I just gave up on the story entirely.

Looking for impressions from anyone who takes their MMO's casually.

The original was one of the only MMO's that I continued to play for any period of time. I always shy away from MMO's because after a month or so, I get bored and don't want to pay a monthly fee, I think that's what I loved about the original. You could do MMO stuff, or single player PVE or PVP.

I'm as casual as they get these days, with a 2 year old and a 4 month old. I played a warrior up to level 5 this weekend. The game catered to my immediate interests. I loved exploring the world, and having events and goals appear as i learned the layout. Really looking forward to playing for real.

jonnypolite wrote:

I'm as casual as they get these days, with a 2 year old and a 4 month old. I played a warrior up to level 5 this weekend. The game catered to my immediate interests. I loved exploring the world, and having events and goals appear as i learned the layout. Really looking forward to playing for real.

Yeah, 3 kids here so my gaming time is super limited.. but I do love MMO's for the social aspect.

Sounds perfect.