Guild Wars 2

The new map is absolutely beautiful in terms of looks and mechanics. I enjoyed the terrain, even though I did take some damage while walking which reminded me of the old days when you’d just die randomly. The bugged skills for necro that were fixed on live, were still bugged for this test.

The choke points are every where and the different levels of elevation are amazing. I’ve read some of the comments so far on the board and I disagree with the ones saying roamers will have a hard time here. This map felt very big and no blob is going to come after the small havok groups.

That being said, that’s what seems like could be a strong point for this map, the lay out. A big concern for a lot of people are blobs and the fact that not all servers have one. This map seems to take that into consideration with the different objectives you can do to help your server out and I appreciated that.

Our group came organized and ready to fight/test but unfortunately there wasn’t much opposition which made the stress test feel more like a PvE fest and K-Train. That’s fine because we got to check out many different things and had a great time with it. I would have had liked to have had more fights over the objectives and see what all the terrain has to offer but maybe next test, if there is one.

I know our team came out organized and probably too prepared but it was explained to us to be ready for fights, I guess we took it too seriously but I feel those who didn’t make it into this beta and those wanting the best out of the new map deserved a fair test. Having people swap servers during the test was not the right call from those invited to this beta. This was a stress test on the new WvWvW map that LOTS of people have been anxiously waiting for after all this time. I get that people wanted to explore the map but I believe our mentality was trying to put this map to the test. Some of those who were invited will be the same ones complaining later on but how can criticism be had when people were so quick to give up and log off or swap servers?

After wiping the opposing teams just a few times we realized that there was not going to be opposition, never saw a group of red again because people were swapping servers at this time(30-40 mins into this thing), and so we explored every part of the map. There is a lot out there to see and again, it looks amazing.

The buffs you receive are interesting, especially being immune to fall damage as a server. With how elevated you can be at times, this buff is fun The lava dogs, or whatever they are, could probably be toned down a notch but it’s hard to say since there wasn’t many to fight or use it against. The lava portals and stealth mechanics were cool too. Upon entering our first fight, our enemy was in stealth and got the jump on us pretty good. You could really see the potential there for some fun happenings. I did not care for the wind turrets but I enjoy the mechanic they bring.

It was an honor to be invited to help test the future WvWvW map for GW2.

We all were there to explore and have fun. I know our group did just that but the lack of interaction with opposition overall was a bit of a shame. Being allowed to swap servers seems to have under minded the work that ANet put into this and I found that to be silly. Again, this was a stress test…

As far as a stress test goes, I thought it went really well. Nicely done all around to the ANet devs involved. It was a lot of fun getting to discuss the map with you all.