Guild Wars 2

Just wondering what people think from the final beta. In your opinion, do you think HoT is ready to go live from what you experienced?

Well, other than the content being accidentally nerfed into the ground so far, what we experienced of the overworld seemed basically perfect to me.

Raids were obviously problematic, but it seems like a problem with a metasystem that can almost certainly be resolved before launch, rather than something endemic to raiding itself. It sounds like they may be a bit easier than promised based on the few people who got in, but I guess we’ll see how it goes beyond the first encounter. Let’s call this one 50/50 confidence.

The class balance is pretty atrocious, but this isn’t surprising since the vanilla classes are also atrociously balanced. I, for one, welcome our new Chronomancer and Reaper overlords, and am crossing my fingers that Dragonhunter will see a few more major buffs to its trait line before launch. While I don’t the elite specializations are ready for launch balance wise, I also know that’s not really a realistic reason to delay the expansion, since balance itself is always fluid.

Definitely not ready to go live.

Like Isarii.2804 said balance is an issue at the moment but I’d also say lack of polish is a problem too. There are lots of little issues that aren’t really bad but they all add up to put a bad taste in my mouth.

Things like in the story mission we can play, NPCs will talk to each other like they are face to face only they don’t face each other and one of them will be in the camp while the other will be miles away or NPCs running at ungodly speeds to catch up to you because they fell behind.

Little things that really ruin the feel of the game and the immersion for me.

I’d be happier if they pushed release back a month to really make what they have shine rather than push it out on the 23rd and fix things later on.

Well, if it’s anything like the BWE3 build, then obviously not, but we have no idea how much improved the internal builds are. But yeah, the BWE3 classes mostly still need a lot of work, the events need some serious reworking, there is a lot that is not working right, but it’s not impossible.

19 more days. I’ll bet they’re going to be putting in long hours. Lots of bugs and fine tuning to work on.

lordhelmos.7623:

Just wondering what people think from the final beta. In your opinion, do you think HoT is ready to go live from what you experienced?

What we experience isn’t a reflection on whether it’s ready for release. You can have a smooth BETA and a terrible launch or vice versa. I understand why people are concerned, but even if everyone on the forums asked ANet to postpone the launch, I can’t imagine they would do it. It would take some catastrophic issues for them to change the date at this point.

Straight answer? Not by a long shot.

After this disaster of a beta, I feel sorry for the countless devs that will be working 80 hour weeks up until release to get this mess solved.

And considering that the biggest patch they ever did post-release was the April 2014 patch, which left me unable to play for a week, I’ll wait a few hours after release before I update so I can figure out if it’s (sadly probably) some sort of game-breaking issue.

So for those that did the core game beta tests, how smooth were those compared to HoT’s?

Ayrilana.1396:

So for those that did the core game beta tests, how smooth were those compared to HoT’s?

A lot of bugs to my recollection. For example, Mesmer skills frequently put mesmers under the map or inside things. I remember one guy who got stuck in a rock or underground and could get out because he was in combat for some reason. There wasn’t an official forum back then but if you search gw2guru 2012 beta bugs you’ll find a few pages on threads about bugs.

doesn’t feel ready…feels like a game entering a beta not a game finishing one . but who knows maybe the internal qa is really good and the rest of the game is rock solid.

There are still many bugs being reported amongst the new class abilities, some of which have existed for multiple beta weekends (looking at you, Revenant). They won’t all be fixed in time.

Class balance is FAR from ready, although I don’t have high hopes they will do much more in ~2 weeks. Look at many of the still broken vanilla abilities ie Spirit Weapons… some things just never get fixed or looked at.

I expected the raids and new zones to be a total bugfest, but this is actually okay because ANet has made the decision not to beta test them. They want to save the surprise of new areas / lore for launch, and I actually really appreciate this. Dealing with a few bugs in order to have a fully new experience for the entire community seems way better than knowing literally everything about the game 6+ months before release.

I think it’s pretty close to ready, but I wish they spent more time developing and testing the new elite specs. Some things are going to inevitably end up swept under the rug as developers switch focus to getting the expansion running smoothly after launch. Class balance will likely fall down the ladder of priorities if new zones are broken, right?

It’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of the pre-launch betas were months before release, April, June, and July for a late August launch. These were a bit more compressed, this weekend is loser to launch than the last GW2 beta was to launch, so it’s a bit more concerning, but sure, they could turn a lot of it around.

I tend to not worry about balance, for classes, as some things will just be like that. I do hope they fix if there is a problem, but I am ready for the release, more or less. It going to be an interesting weekend, but I feel they be ready. If not, for me at least, still plenty I like to do in the core.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s worth keeping in mind that a lot of the pre-launch betas were months before release, April, June, and July for a late August launch. These were a bit more compressed, this weekend is loser to launch than the last GW2 beta was to launch, so it’s a bit more concerning, but sure, they could turn a lot of it around.

Sure but the original game was a much bigger project to polish 2. 4 zones isn’t 25 zones. One raid isn’t 32 dungeon paths. It’ll be fine.