So I failed. My intention was to completely skip the Guild Wars 2 Beta even though I had already preordered the game. My original plan was to simply look at the character creation options available, but not play the game at all so it would be fresh and new when I started playing next month. Instead I ended up playing the game for about 6 hours, including the end-of-beta event. And as expected I very much liked what little I saw of the game.
During my time with the beta I created 6 different characters of various races and classes: a Human Elementalist, a Auran Thief, a Norn Engineer, a Sylvan Necromancer. and a Char Warrior. The highest level I got on any character was level 5. This was enough to see some of the basic mechanics of each class. It was enough to unlock several weapons, and to see the 'heart?' quests and dynamic quests in action.
I have to say that Guild Wars 2 could very easily be relabeled ADD Wars and with good reason. Maybe it's just the game front-loading the starter zone, but with the heart quests, dynamic quests, and world events going on it became very hard to stay focused on one task. Event were popping up left and right, making the world seem very active and packed with content. This was both good, and bad. Good in the sense that there was always something to do, and it was easy to just get caught up in it and lost in the world. But bad in the sense that it quickly became a bit overwhelming at times. And this was made worse considering the sheer numbers of people in the game doing the events, where there were often scores of people doing the same thing at the same time. Things often became confusing and hard to follow, and since the world doesn't wait around for you it can sometimes end up with you getting lost, or missing out on things because you couldn't keep up.
The chaotic nature of the game made my transition with the interface itself a bit problematic. My fingers are now used to Tera, which has an interface different than most MMOs. Guild Wars 2 has a slightly more traditional interface, but it was one I was having a hard time adjusting to. I don't think this will be a major problem for most people, but I did end up heavily modifying the default interface to get it to where I liked it. By the time I was done, and Hunger Royal started, the interface wasn't bothering me so much.
I never figured out how to gather (I guess you have to purchase items to enable this but I never got a chance to test it). I also didn't get to do any crafting at all, so I don't know how good or bad that system is or how good the gear is. I avoided doing story quests (except for the ones you have to do in the starter area). Instead I primary focused on heart quests and dynamic quests, and a bit of exploring. I did a couple of skill challenges, found several vistas (which are very Assassin's Creed-like). There will be a LOT of possible exploring in this game, which should really help with the longevity of the game.
Overall my first impressions with the game are is that it is very beautiful, very smooth, and it can clearly scale pretty well. Combat is very tight, and combines some of the best elements of WOW and Tera. It seems faster paced than either of those games, though, and the game does suffer from having so many effects on screen that it can be sometimes hard to stay up with the action. I'm also not quite convinced about the way skills are tied to weapons. From what I can tell it doesn't take very long to unlock things, so it's pretty obvious that you can unlock all of the abilities of your character very early on. Weapon swaps will certainly help, and I presume will be a cornerstone of the system when that ability unlocks.
I'm definitely excited to get a chance to play the game in late obvious. Perhaps more excited than I was before. In the meantime, I've still got Tera to play around with and that's what I'll be doing in the short term I think.
On another subject, I finally cancelled by subscription to Star Wars: The Old Republic. While it had it's problems and the game lost its luster long too soon I have to say that I really enjoyed the game and will remember it fondly. Too bad TOR's end game was so boring. I have about 20 days to log back in and do stuff before my last play period expires.
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