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

Very cool. I'm curious to know if anyone reached level 17ish in the last beta weekends and how long it took you. I'd love to start a new Asura and take him into the new second tier area, but I have no idea if that's going to be possible in one weekend withoud devoting nearly every hour to playing.

Arrgh - double post sorry.

I'm pretty sure some people managed to get really high, maybe even to the cap, but then levelling to 20/80 isn't such a big deal in GW.

I managed to get to 10ish a few times fairly easily, and with the flat levelling curve I can't imagine there being a big obstacle if you want to push on through the zones. I wasn't going to go any further than that, and wanted to check out other classes/explore.

jdzappa wrote:

Very cool. I'm curious to know if anyone reached level 17ish in the last beta weekends and how long it took you. I'd love to start a new Asura and take him into the new second tier area, but I have no idea if that's going to be possible in one weekend withoud devoting nearly every hour to playing.

Depends on your definition of "nearly every hour". I hit level 21 or 22 with my Norn Mesmer in BWE1, and I worked 10 hour shifts on Friday and Saturday. Other than a normal amount of sleep and dining though, GW2 was my only other activity that weekend, and the Mesmer was all I played.

Also, it's not like the areas are level-locked; it's a 17-20 zone, you can surely go in at 15 without getting crushed and there should be plenty of others around to help with the content given that it's the new area.

I tried to rush a little during the last BWE to catch up with the rest of my guild (WvW-oriented). I reached at least level 25 but it was no fun at all. I'd suggest just to enjoy the sights and not worry too much about where you'll end up.

django wrote:

I'd suggest just to enjoy the sights and not worry too much about where you'll end up.

That's what I'm going to try to do, at least initially. I look back at some of the characters I made for WoW and there were clearly some I was just playing for the moment, and some I was 'just levelling' to get to the end, and I know which ones I enjoyed more. You only get one first time through a game, so I'm aiming not to put myself under any pressure, besides to learn the right way to play this new game. If I feel like doing something weird, following a random DE chain or just sitting in a city and crafting semi-afk, I'll do it - thankfully the game is meant to fully support this and reward you for it.

Outlandish wrote:

Also, it's not like the areas are level-locked; it's a 17-20 zone, you can surely go in at 15 without getting crushed...

you will most likely get crushed.

they won't one-shot you.. but if you are alone and aggro 2+ mobs, you will go down.

I don't know, by that stage you really should be learning how to play well enough that it doesn't purely come down to numbers, you should know to be careful in a high level zone, and you should have unlocked a fair few abilities to help you by then. I'd say it wouldn't be the optimal zone to be in, but +2 levels shouldn't be that bad.

Brand-New Map – Brisban Wildlands
This brand-new map, recommended for players level 17-20, makes its debut this weekend.

Very very cool. I got to about lvl 17 in BWE1, and I have to say that without repeating content, the Norn starting area ran dry at about level 16. I know others have told me to visit the starting areas for the other races but it just seems wrong. Now you don't have to re-do content getting to the 20's.

PS. I think it only took about 12-16 hours. I didn't push it that hard.

The other thing about repeating the early areas is that the personal quest has a bit of variation in it depending on your character creation choices. My norn guardian has a very different chain to my elementalist. I'm not sure how far that goes though.

Scratched wrote:

I'd say it wouldn't be the optimal zone to be in, but +2 levels shouldn't be that bad.

By all means give that a try and let us know how it works out for you

Unless they changed the balancing a lot after the first two BWEs though, I suggest you pack along a good supply of lube.

As I said, it would probably be hard, but I expect manageable for some people. Unlike GW1 though, there are longer term death penalties than just needing to go back to an outpost, so on balance I can't see that it would be worth pushing to get into a higher zone if you're not ready for it, even more so with how downleveling works.

Elycion wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'd say it wouldn't be the optimal zone to be in, but +2 levels shouldn't be that bad.

By all means give that a try and let us know how it works out for you

Unless they changed the balancing a lot after the first two BWEs though, I suggest you pack along a good supply of lube.

Haha

Scratched wrote:
django wrote:

I'd suggest just to enjoy the sights and not worry too much about where you'll end up.

That's what I'm going to try to do, at least initially. I look back at some of the characters I made for WoW and there were clearly some I was just playing for the moment, and some I was 'just levelling' to get to the end, and I know which ones I enjoyed more. You only get one first time through a game, so I'm aiming not to put myself under any pressure, besides to learn the right way to play this new game. If I feel like doing something weird, following a random DE chain or just sitting in a city and crafting semi-afk, I'll do it - thankfully the game is meant to fully support this and reward you for it.

This is pretty much how I will start out as well. Eventually I will trickle in alts and then see which to push as my main.

One of the things I like about gw2 is naming warriors and general melee banks in sieges. You can set up a range build if you want. Back in DAOC, it was challenging at times as a pure melee when attacking castles and keeps. This game changes that.

I read the wipe includes guilds and server selection as well - just a heads up.

I'm just waiting for the next 'which community is going on which server' listing to go up so I can plan accordingly.

The Worlds of the Final Beta Weekend Event

WvW changes - better matchmaking and initially shorter matches while the server populations settle down.

and

A shorter server list

Quite frankly, we made too many worlds for BWE2 just because we could and not because we should, and thus we had a lot of low population worlds. This time around we’re focusing our new CPU horsepower into fewer, more populated worlds.

I can't wait to see the engineer changes to the kits and turrets. At least I hope that those changes would be in with a month left until release?!

I don't think they hold anything back unless they're really not sure about it and it hasn't passed through internal testing yet. Central mechanics things like that aren't something you keep hidden to 'surprise' people with at launch, I think they'd love it if they put a public build out and it worked fine requiring no further changes.

So, unless you guys make an organized move towards a different one, I'll be starting on Fort Aspenwood again.

GW2 Blog wrote:

Don’t worry, we’ll be closely monitoring our world populations this weekend and can quickly launch new worlds as needed should problems arise with our new population limits. Our server tech is now able to raise or lower population caps with some very simple changes that don’t require us to take the game down. This lets us adjust world populations based on how the servers react and you won’t even have to leave the game!

You know, an earlier game had a technology like this, but it was automatic. "Districts" I think they called it.

Spoiler:

GW had automatic districts, not shards

It's a little different, although perhaps not by much. Instead of outposts and explorable areas being instanced, those instances are now tied to 'a server' with overflow instances when it's too busy. Along with that there's how your character is only tied to a server for representing WvW, but other than that you can go anywhere.

It's very clever/wise how they evolved GW1 into GW2, rather than starting from scratch. Patching is the other big one I'm glad they're keeping, although I'm not sure if they'll flick the switch to allow streaming it down as you play, and as you go into an area. With the areas being shared rather than just your party for the time your in it, I'm not sure how they would handle patching a zone and telling everyone to relog/rezone.

Any idea if they ever announced how they plan to patch the game? Is it a specific day like WoW or as mentioned, patch while you play?

whispa wrote:

Any idea if they ever announced how they plan to patch the game? Is it a specific day like WoW or as mentioned, patch while you play?

As you play most likely.

In GW1 you would occasionally see a message "An update is available, please restart your client", restart, you get a few new files downloaded and you're back. If they update an area, the next time you zone into it those files will download and be applied, (or in the background if you're elsewhere when the update happens).

The other cool thing about GW1 is that starting from just gw.exe it'll download what it needs as it goes. First it'll just get the base content needed to run the game, then each area as you travel, and once the bit your currently playing is fully loaded while you're playing it'll download the next bit in the background. Like how WoW works since v4 or their earlier trial client except they had the tech in 2005.

Ugh, I am really excited about getting back into gw2 and the eventual release next month! Been awhile since i am this giddy about a game!

whispa wrote:

Ugh, I am really excited about getting back into gw2 and the eventual release next month! Been awhile since i am this giddy about a game!

37 days remaining.

Stolen from reddit: A few examples of skilful playing

Nice vid, very cool to see why he took actions, dodging etc. A lot of it, aside from trial and error, is knowing your opponents class skills etc.