Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I have finally gotten some time aside to play the Beta. I’m really enjoying it. Things feel much more like this is going to be something really exciting.

I’m also really impressed with the car given to the Lutist, Drummer, and Flute player up on Noble Ledges. That’s really great. Especially since they’ve got a little bit of a Beatles look to them.

Anyway!

I tried the Engineer this morning. That was pretty different. The hammer field like it could really had utility. I don’t know about still not being able to swap weapons outside of combat. I think the game just needs to move past this lock out. It’s a silly hindrance with no real functionality.

Currently I’m trying the Ranger. I haven’t really explored into the Druid at all. The pets are great, except the tiger. The tiger just feels dated. I’m not sure if the Lightening Wyvern isn’t also bugged.

IF I’m understanding the design of this expansion right, Mastery isn’t so much one thing. It’s old school raid content dynamics made into something more accessible and open world. For example, it’s night time right now. Security second level. Open chat is discussing how to get to the canopy. So, there are these canopy choppers that can take us up there? It’s not very clear, but if so that’s neat. Once there we then have to have access to the shroom abilities to get to the bosses.
Now, if all of this is true then this is really exciting. This would suggest that the real experience of this expansion is about adding a whole game’s worth of endgame content onto what we already have. Which would be, if true, precisely what the majority of the player base has been asking for again and again.

To clarify a bit… It looks as though Mastery points are not so much about improving your character as getting around in the world. So, it’s very much about exploration and cooperative play. We help each other get to different areas of the map, different bosses, and through different sorts of mastery point abilities. That’s pretty Zelda-esk and gets into what else players have been asking for: a move away from just adding some sort of gear-locked content only a few elite players will ever get to see – and then treat everyone else like an inferior species.

If all this is true then I think players are going to find this expansion a lot more satisfying than initial appearances. I really do.

I’m still a little sick to my stomach about the size of the maps. As soon as I unlocked gliding I went from going “how do I get over there?” to “where’s the highest place I can find?”

I’m sure there’s a lot more content here I haven’t come across yet, but this is all really feeling very positive.

P.S.

Thanks for letting us be part of the beta rather than saying “our beta testers approved this” who would forever be some claims to anonymous we-don’t-care-or-believe-you-people. It really feels like you’ve figured out you’ve got a player base now and you’re responding to us. It’s such a different experience from the last few years of ominous and eerie silences by Anet, the contradictory statements, and so much else that’s generated such animosity from the player base. Really and truly, it’s all feeling pretty different from any other MMO and altogether a good state of affairs!

Thanks Anet peeps!

“…with the { car = care } given to the Lutist, Drummer, and Flute player up on Noble Ledges. "

I’m having fun in the beta too. I’m thinking people who are immersion players will like it a lot. They get immersed in the world, the jungle, what’s going on. I can’t talk about mechanics players, because I don’t focus on that aspect of the game.For me to enjoy an area, all I need is mechanics not to get in the way.

Well said. Nice to see a little positivity amongst all this negativity!

I was right about the exploration thing. I just took a chopper to the canopy. Glider is necessary for doing some of it and then shrooms for some other parts. It ends up working together, but I’m not sure all how. I haven’t gotten into the shroom mastery bit yet.

Also, mastery points come just by wandering around doing whatever. It’s just like regular experience points except they go into these exotic abilities. So, it’s like getting perks for being into the game and exploring rather than greedily getting one over on your party so you can have the best loot.

Nice Thread +1! Yes I can’t wait for the HoT release. It’s going to be great.

Honestly, they did a really great job with this. The artwork is beautiful and the world is so immersive. I also love the new music. PvE is going to be a great way to relax after a long days work.

Although I am sad about the glitch making things too easy and the much worse glitch causing raids to be canceled for the weekend (I’d have gone to see The Martian last night if I’d known for sure I wouldn’t be able to join a raid run), I’ve had a lot of fun testing Druid and Scrapper.

I also am pleased that I did not find a single glitched event. I don’t think anyone’s commented on that due to focusing on other things but remember how the events were bugged to a fail status the last two times? This time Ordnance and Faren went off exactly right every time I played them and nighttime events were as they should be (though I did find one spot that wasn’t as nerfed as others, or at least remained too hard for a Druid to solo, to wit the rally point above Faren’s wp. That’s a very dense pack of mordrem and tendrils to deal with). Ok, on Ordnance the salvage parts were a bit scarce, I got the feeling that they were limited in how many one person could find in a day and if you’d done the event the previous cycle you weren’t going to come across more than one or two the next time.

The bright side of losing out on raids for tomorrow is that I can take my time making two more alts to see how Daredevil and Reaper have progressed, as those will be my first elites in HoT and I want to be able to give some feedback on their current status.

I am so looking forward to launch and seeing all the stuff that’s been cut out of betas to avoid spoilers.

Continuing Update:

I’m loving the music so far. I speak only of the ambient music. I have absolutely no good memories of Nightfall so every time I hear battlemusic in Guild Wars 2 I have to turn it off. I broke my battlemusic years ago by setting in a blank .m3u file. If the option doesn’t exist to turn it off though, it really should be made.

The events are going great, too! I remember last Beta I was pretty convinced this expansion wasn’t ready to launch. So far, it feels like this has come a lot long ways.

Right now I’m testing my heart out on the Druid – pun intended – and I’m really starting to understand the intent of this expansion.

In most MMOs there’s just the torture of the forever-grind to the gear-lock that’s whatever the next released raid is. In reality it’s just resetting the game. You level from 0 to N and then grind to death for gear. All so that you can go to the next gear-treadmill. It’s the most loathsome thing about MMOs.

This game expansion seems to be working toward dumping that aspect of the torture-mill of other MMOs entirely.

One thing I’m really seeing from playing the Druid is the sense that my character isn’t really a heal bot. Rather, I actually have heal functionality. This isn’t the player-targeted healing of the usual sort in games. It’s made to work with the zerg, turtles, bubbles, and etc.

I like this. It means we’re not going to suddenly see the death of the game we’ve come to know and love for some ‘thing’ sold to us as ‘progress’ by the corporate-cookie-cutter.
Masteries seem to be built to support endgame experience rather than to change it or make something else that gets called ‘end game’, but is really a niche affair. By this I mean to say that running Druid, Chronomancer, Dragon Hunter, Tempest, and etc is really just saying “I like co-op”.

Maybe that should be clarified: The way that Masteries seem to work is that it is not the end-goal to reach for your class. Masteries are a way do more in coordination with the rest of the community without freezing your freedom of play into a single functionality.

This whole expansion could be very healthy for the MMO world. We’re moving away from the “it’s about me” and “end game is level 0 to level cap via the armor/raid grind model” that World of Warcraft popularized.

I think with the way these Masteries move, specifically move, we’re seeing a different way to do a game evolving. It is more about the sandbox, the big trains, while still allowing for a good ten person raid to coordinate. Note that most of these Mastery abilities target specifically 5 people. What this likely will do is set up raids so that Party A (consisting of 5 people) is doing one thing while Party B (…consisting of 5 people) is doing another. It’s not the same game where we heal, heal, heal, or blast, blast, blast then sit down and wait for mana/health/endurance to regenerate. It’s also more often not the kind of game where a caster or archer can’t move while taking an action. I think a lot of players were fearing we’d see some fall back into the old modes of play that cripple some people while liberating others into god-like utilities. This feels balanced right now.

Now, if suddenly raids end up falling back into the gear-locking of content I’ll take all this praise and throw it in the bin, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. Anet’s been pretty consistent in staying away from doing that to us. This ‘must have ascended gear’ thing – if true – may do it. I’m a little nervous about that. If we go there, there are real problems ahead for this game. If we dodge it … well, then we’re in uncharted territory. No MMO has done that completely yet.