Guild Wars 2

So, I absolutely love the look of the Revenant, and I really like the system you put into place for the special, elite skill usage.

Forced Engagement though, didn’t appear to have any affect. I could be wrong… but I found myself ignoring the use of the skill as a result. Maybe that’s just me… I wasn’t a fan of the starting weapons given, though I did end up going dual wield because I found I liked the skills a little better than the two-hander. I’d definitely use a different weapon in-game if I had a choice.

I really, really, really dislike how much of a maze the map is, though. I’m sorry, but it’s absolutely terrible. I can’t stand going to Dry Top because of its layout… The layout on this map is much worse. While I absolutely love the scenery, I found myself constantly confused about where I was supposed to go for an event, and sometimes even where the next step took place (especially that quest where you’re shooting endless mortars and killing endless mordrem in an effort to kill some vine or other; I don’t know the name of the quest though). Before anyone asks, the answer is NO: I didn’t try hang gliding to get around easier. By the time it trained up and I gained the level required for it, it decided to not work despite doing everything I should be doing to make it work. And then the beta ended.

Despite the frustration, I still had fun doing events, and I still love the look of the Revenant. Please keep the look and change the maps!

As a matter of fact, hang gliding indeed makes it a lot easier to get around and I found it to be a lot of fun, too!

The shortness of the beta was very frustrating – I work, PST time zone, and could only play during the last session. I was about 9/10ths of the way to getting my first mastery trained (I assume – near the end of a level), and the beta ended before I could test out the new mastery system. What I mostly have at the top of my head right now is lots of stress from playing night defense missions, frustration at the map, and being very upset that I didn’t get to try gliding – I’ve loved seeing game worlds from the air in the past, and was really eager to do it here.

Revenants were okay, and I kinda liked them – but they also seemed clunky. Not sure if that was beta clunkiness or just part of how the class played, but heals seemed to take a while to go off, and switching legends seemed awkward also. Mace / whatever the other thing was wasn’t fun at all for me, I spent the majority of the time playing hammer and don’t think I would ever use the other combo. I will probably make one, eventually, but won’t be rushing out to buy the other character slot.

I dunno. It wasn’t what I expected. I don’t like dim, depressing scenery, and while I get that they were trying to convey a warzone, it just… wasn’t very fun to look at. This could be tainted by the fact that I spent most of the daytime in the personal story or lost, though, and saw the world almost entirely at night. I heard from my husband, who was able to make the daytime sessions, that the day events were cool, but I missed out on them. And, like the OP, I’m not thrilled by the rough terrain – I also got my fill of that in Drytop. Sure, gliding might help… but I didn’t get a chance to find out.

I am left feeling like I’m making excuses for ANet. I think most of those “excuses” are valid explanations, but after only 2 hours of play, I don’t really know. I am actually now less likely to buy HoT than I was pre-beta (realistically, I’ll most likely still buy, just not immediately when it comes out – I’ll probably wait a few weeks first and try out FF XIV in the meantime, I’ll be getting a free copy soon). And that really sucks, because I had been really looking forward to this and wanted to come out of it raving about how excited I was. Now… it’ll be nice to have new stuff to do, but I won’t be surprised if I actually spend more time playing the old content after HoT comes out. It was just stressful. I have a headache…

The funny thing is, while the experience wasn’t bug-free by a long shot, I would actually say that from a quality perspective this beta felt more polished than many early betas I’ve been in. But I still found it frustrating and draining.