My guild was playing on the Far Shiverpeaks server, a server that filled up early Saturday morning. Which also meant I was not able to play with one of my friends as the guest-system wasn't available and server-moves didn't work for me.
I'll actually start with four bad things because that's the way I roll. Three points are most likely beta-issues, one I have even seen responded to by ArenaNet. And oh yeah, I did love the game, read on or just jump to the good.
It was a real hassle playing with friends. When trying to access an area and the area was full it asked if one would like to go to an "overflow server", which sounded good. The problem was that everyone in the team ended up on different overflow servers, and it took literally hours before it asked if you wanted to go to your home server instance of the server.
And this queue system was also a bit offensive as you could circumvent it by continually trying to access the area without accepting the queue, and it would in turn let you in after only a few minutes.
The part about team members ending up on different overflow servers was commented on by Arena Net already during the beta.
Second point was the rewards for dynamic events. I can't remember how many times I got rewards, sometimes even gold, for events I did not take part in. I was only in the area, sometimes harvesting, other times killing something completely unrelated. This is not that bad, the rewards were not so big that I felt like people could take advantage of this. What did make me a bit annoyed, and a guildie had a similar experience during the Shadow Behemoth event, was that using about 20-40% of the time in a very large scale event with reviving players would only grant you bronze. I would argue that keeping players on their feet would be a good thing during a boss fight, but apparently not.
Third point was the respawn time of mobs. Usually not a big problem if there is a lot of room to jump out of the way, but on two occasions it hindered gameplay. Me and two guildies were going into the bandit cave underneath Shaemoor Cemetary, but the respawning time of bandits meant there was no way to advance after having gained entrance to the cave because as soon as we killed the bandits in front of us, we had to kill the ones behind us, and when they were down, it was back to the ones in front. A few seconds longer respawn would have helped.
The second time was after me and one guildie had completed the jumping puzzle and were entering the ooze cave. We made our way to the mouth of the cave, but when we started to attack the Veteran oozes and their cohorts, the oozes in the tunnel leading up came back and started attack from behind. In such a very closed off area and after a rather specific jumping puzzle, perhaps a little longer respawn time would be ok.
Last thing on my negative list were the "Mystery Chest"s. I have since seen that apparently the keys for these drop as well, though on much more rare occasions, and the ingame description only mentions keys as present in the Gem Store. I understand that these are not that bad, and that I can ignore the chests, but I really dislike when games with item shops have lottery-ticket items (and time limited clothing/storage/weapons).
I did open two chests and the rewards were ok. Mostly fluff in the shape of tonics so I won't be buying the keys. But the chests dropped so often it started to become an in-joke with my guild.
So, those were all my bad comments. The trading post didn't work for me, but I'm counting that as a bug.
And now for the good, and wow is there a lot of good in this game. Just WOW!!!
I could walk anywhere. And I don't mean "I can walk anywhere, I can even fly over all this land and never look back", I mean "I can walk anywhere and do things and experience things and there will be a reason for me to be there."
My best example was when I decided to just run into the wilderness after having helped some kids in a snowball fight. After a short while I saw some players and headed towards them, turned out they were doing a skill point event and were fighting some Sons of Svanir. I helped them (without a teamup or a word) and got a reward for the event, including the skill point. The players then started running in the direction I came from, so I decided to try and climb a mountain side not meant for climbing. Halfway over I saw a Veteran Worm Queen under attack by some players on top of a hill. Not surprisingly, I made my way there and helped out.
After the Queen was down I looked around and saw a grawl hiding under a tree. Not acceptable and an offense punishable by death in Guild Wars 2, atleast if you're a grawl. As the grawl fell to the ground I got a notice saying I had helped out in an event and a short list of what I could do to help further. And that's how it continued.
Actually, it's not that hard to find things to do. Press [M] to get your map, it will show "Point[s] of Interest", "Waygate"s and continuous so called "Heart event"s. All of these should be interesting to you if you're bored. And then there's the thing I liked the most, and something I saw most players accept immediately, on your map you can see downed or defeated players and NPC's and if you run over to them and help them back up you will get a little experience points, as well as being a real hero to someone.
You will also get notices about dynamic events happening and an icon where this happens will show up on your mini-map. If you see an icon of a shield there is someone or something to protect, if it's a skull with horns there's a boss and if it's a basket with an arrow it's a drop off point for something most likely found nearby.
And the best about all these things? There was not a single time I had to run to someone with an exclamation mark, do something and then run back saying I did this. The only times I had to go to a specific NPC was when I had to drop something off (like rabbit food), had to get something for a skillpoint or during my personal story when people actually requested to talk to my character.
My best event was something not that large and not very rewarding, but the feeling was splendid and the voice of the NPC was superb. Right outside the entrance to Divinitys Reach is Shaemoor village with Shaemoor Cemetary to one corner. Me and two guildies came there during the day and spoke to a Priest of Grenth on guard there, as well as the not mentally healthy keeper. They both spoke of things appearing in the night, and me and my guildies felt this was worth an investigation.
We spent the rest of the daylight in Queensdale doing odd stuff here and there and as dusk fell we quickly went to the cemetary.
It soon started to fill with bats, the kind that would not attack if you did not attack them, and fog. A white, thick fog covering the ground and seeping between the headstones.
After a short while a transparent lady called "The White Lady" started walking up and down the isles, stopping from time to time to weep in an eerie, echoing voice. After a while she asked if we could follow her home and... I won't spoil the rest, but make sure to get there for the next beta if your missed it during this one.
That was the first point of good stuff, here's the second. During most of the weekend I played a ranger which was definitely not my plan from the beginning, but she stuck to me after a while and I wanted to see some areas for higher level characters. But this is not my point, my point was the gameplay.
In the end I used two weapon sets, one was a longbow and the other a sword mainhand and torch offhand set. I tried the different melee weapons, really working to liking twohanded sword, but onehanded sword and torch gave me a good AOE/Combo-field, a DOT-attack, a good simple melee and two dodge-melee attacks. The longbow in turn (I never got myself to try the shortbow) had a good spike-attack, some AOE, a knockback and the arrows worked great together with the flamefield of my torch and the healing field of my heal ability which created an AOE-heal for all friendlies to use.
And the best part about this? As can be seen by my skills, I was able to play both melee and ranged. This should be true for all professions, but I haven't tried the others. Depending on what enemy I fought and the composition of the players I was with, I could switch on the fly to what worked best.
I never really mastered it, that would take more than a weekend, atleast for me, but I found that if I swapped to my melee set when out of combat, I could start most combats by getting a fire down, setting my enemy on fire and then switch to my bow and continue setting the enemy on fire.
I was also an able melee-character, not the most armored, but with some good skills that allowed me to beat up my opponent at the same time as keeping away from too many hits.
And then there was dodge. Oh glorious dodge how I long to perfect you. From having been on my back in most fights with opponents much larger and hardhitting than myself, I started to find that a well placed dodge would keep me up and get them down quicker.
As an example of these mechanics I can recall the Champion Black Moa fights in the end event of the beta. Most fights we were a very large number of players, and in these I primarily used my bow, taking advantage of all the different fields players put up, as well as putting down my healing spring and using it to send a little health to the people on melee distance of the birds.
But in one fight we were mostly ranged attackers, and I swapped to my melee set, working the bird from close range while others pummeled it from afar. And this was when dodge became really important. I dodged out of fire fields, I dodged out of scorpion wires and I took a big beating from the birds beaks and feet. As I said earlier, I never did perfect it.
And my third point, yes there are less good than bad points, but the bad points were beta-issues, the good points are the game. And oh my are they good points.
Crafting and gathering. This was really fun. I've never been much for this as it always meant having to get weird materials that I had to level up gathering in order to get, and after that I had to grind the crafting table for days to get anywhere. And there are only so many mushrooms you can pick in order to gain more levels before you decide to go somewhere and do something constructive with your life.
In Guild Wars 2 it works like this:
Gathering can be performed by anyone for any material. The only restriction is that you need to have the tool for a specific resource node. Tools are bought in bundles of 100 as they break slowly. They are kept in three specific slots on your character, one for plants, one for metals and one for lumber. So, pickaxe, sickle and axe. As you go into higher level areas, the materials require better tools, better versions are bought from merchants in these areas. They are not very expensive, so you don't have to feel cheated when you trash 55 rough pickaxes because you need to buy 100 iron pickaxes.
If you gather a node, but your instrument is not good enough, you will get vendor trash with a comment that you need better stuff. Go to a nearby merchant and check out his goods and change up if he has better stuff than you.
All resource nodes are personal. I can not stress this enough, ALL RESOURCE NODES ARE PERSONAL. And you will not fail in getting a resource, but you might not get as much every time.
So, now you have your copper and your green wood and pieces of leather from having salvaged something salvagable and you go to your crafting station.
From start you have a bunch of recipes depending on what crafting cathegory you chose. Here's a tip, if you use your vial of blood to create a rune instead of using it immideatly when creating the weapon you can make better stuff. Just create your two parts for the weapon as well as the rune, choose the discovery pane, put your two weapon parts and the rune in three of the four fields and voila, you have a weapon with a better stat than could be done by following the recipe.
Actually, putting stuff in the discovery panes will tell you which other items you have that combined with the first might yield something. And if you have all materials, but lack the numbers, it will tell you so. And if you the material, but lack the crafting experience, it will tell you so as well.
And it's insane fun to work with. Stuff will not break, it will not be pointless and you can make it better by experimenting a little.
So, these were my thoughts on the first weekend beta event I was part of. And this is my story, and I'm sticking to it.
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