First, I’d like to say thanks to Reyana and ArenaNet for inviting me to this event. Overall it was enjoyable, though I wished we had gotten more fights.
Let’s go over the map itself. The design is simply beautiful. Comparing it to the old map just isn’t possible because this one completely blows it away in terms of the way it looks. The size of the map is perfect. People will say it looks huge now because we don’t really know the way the map works yet. It’ll ‘shrink’ with time as we get used to the map. I love the verticality of this map instead of the constant flat terrain in the old map.
All three keeps are amazing. They make the old keeps look like nothing compared to the new ones. The lava keep especially, with all the rooms, is amazing. Great work on this. I like how every tower has a theme. The lich tower by far was the best looking tower, though the lich boss seems the weakest of all the tower lords. Since I’m talking about lord fights here, I might as well bring up the fact that I think they were made pretty well. They aren’t too difficult and they aren’t things that die within 5 seconds like other lords do, and they have some pretty cool animations. I approve.
Ok, let’s talk about NPC’s. Personally I feel there were wayyyy too many PvE mobs all over the place. They are cool in design but they aren’t necessary and could end up being annoying in fights. Maybe reduce the number of spawns slightly? I don’t know really.
I could go on for ages about the map design but… That would take forever. Just to sum it up, great map design, little too much PvE. Much better design than the previous map. It has an EotM feel to it but it’s put into real WvW and even better.
Fights. The best part of WvW….
Fights will be great here, or at least I think so. Smaller scale fights will be possible because of how big the map seems and because of the design. I can’t really explain it, but it just makes sense. Scouts will be super necessary for holding objectives as the keeps and towers are so huge that mesmer sweeps will be hard.
Bigger fights could be a mess. Not really sure yet, because there weren’t really any good fights in this beta (No offense to anyone who played on the other two servers, but Team BG is OP
). I think that this map will encourage high siege play in fights, specifically arrow carts. There are so many small chokes that if used with an arrow cart the fight will be easy. I hope it doesn’t turn into this, though. I hate people that rely on siege to fight. However, if it doesn’t turn into a siege fest, the bigger fights will be interesting. Because of the fact that there are so many small chokes, and so many different advantages to have, fights will be reliant on ranged more than ever I would think. (More pirate ship). Ranged bomb in chokes = death. Simple. There are some more open areas for fights but there are definitely more chokes than the old map. We will see I guess. Either way it’ll be cool to see how fights turn out.
Another thing, and this applies to MOST WvW’ers that play often in WvW.
I understand removing guard stacks, but I don’t understand reducing the cost of everything else. I can assure you that MOST people who actively play WvW have most if not all traits unlocked by now. Personally I’m at rank 3100, what are you going to have us do with the (currently 1800 or so) extra points that will be even more extra points with the release? Let us convert them to gold, or something, instead of them just being useless? Please?
The bugs were real. Actually, not as many as I expected. I’ll just list some of the bugs I found, you can probably find more based off of the few I list.
- In the lich tower, the first staircase to the left of the gate has a gap in between it and the wall. If you fall in there, well, yeah. You get stuck. Mesmer port or waypoint is the only way out.
- At north camp, you can blink/shadowstep to the top floor from below, not sure if this is a bug or not.
- In the lava keep, at one of the gates (I’m bad and don’t remember which) there is a gap to the left of it which allows you to leap through the wall with sword leaps on warriors and probably guardians.
- In some of the keeps, you destroy one gate but a reinforced gate is still up at the same spot. Can’t be targeted.
- Random dying. Lol.
You’ll see some of the bugs I encountered in my video. This is my POV of the event, Team BG. Hype. Also, I play with GEMFX so the colors and details will look slightly better than the normal max settings user.
Some times to take note of for bugs in the video – 6:01 is when I leap through a wall. 6:35 and 8:19 is when I randomly die.
Again, thanks for the opportunity and I will be looking forward to future tests / release of this map.
Blackgate