And now, time for something completely different - Guild Wars 2, ho!

[InfernalExuro]

With last weekend being the second public Beta Weekend Event held for Guild Wars 2, I've finally had the opportunity to take advantage of my collector's edition preorder and spend the entire event playing. Rolled an Elementalist - your usual fire/ice/water/air mage -  first off, considering it was my favorite class in the original Guild Wars and all, though I ended up playing an Engineer for pretty much the entire time. There's just something satisfying about crushing Centaurs beneath your rocket boots during a rocket rifle jump.

There's a few elements of the game that could use some polishing, being still in the beta stage and all, but overall I've been very pleased with the results. Combat flows quite nicely, and the more active style of play compared to the norm is actually a nice change of pace. For example, the active dodge-rolling/evading mechanic is fairly well-implemented, and the underwater combat is leagues better than what I was expecting. I made it up to level 22 during the timespan that I played, which isn't half-bad considering that the highest level I've seen outside of PvP was a 35.

On the topic of PvP, they actually do a great job of providing the means to train before getting dropped into battle. You're automatically boosted to max level (80) and unlock all skills and traits (essentially, boosts to your various stats and abilities that make you more effective in combat), and given a region to practice your skills with or without a team. I used to do competitive PvP in the original Guild Wars, but lost interest and shifted to the more wide-open battle forms in later years. GW2 offers World vs. World, which literally pits servers against eachother in hundred-man battles for control of entire large region, alongside the standard fare you'd expect from competitive PvP. O hopped into WvW for a moment, but my poor old PC can't support too much of that at this point. They're still working on optimizing the framerate for dinosaurs like mine, but it should be ready to go by the full release.

...Oh, and did I mention that even on lowest-possible settings, this game is crazy good-looking for a beta-phase MMO?

Anyways, I'm willing to field any questions about the beta as of yet. And just out of curiosity, did anyone else manage to get on board for the weekend's festivities?

[orinrin]

I played a bit during the previous beta weekend around May, but I didn't really get to play more than a few hours during this weekend.


Most of the lag issues seem to have been fixed, so it was nice to actually be able to dodge attacks for once.  The framerate was drastically improved over the previous beta, where I couldn't even obtain consistent 30 FPS regardless of high or low settings.


I do miss the mission-based gameplay that the original GW offered, but I'm not against having it be open world either.  The streamlined skill system seems to be fluid and intuitive, but it would be nice to see more weapon types or customizable weapon skills in the future.


My favorite class is probably the engineer at the moment.  They cannot swap weapon sets during combat (similar to Elementalists), but they have access to certain weapon/device kits, which are essentially specialized weapon packages that you can equip and unequip in combat.  Using a flamethrower to flush out thieves and switching to the wrench toolkit to whack/repair turrets feels pretty good.  The elixir gun is pretty neat as well, but I didn't get much of a chance to play around it yet.  I'll probably roll an Engineer and Mesmer once the game comes out.

[Seventh Holy Scripture]

release date when  :getdown:

I prepurchased and have played through both BWEs. I've avoided playing too much of the classes I want to main (Warrior and Engineer), instead trying all the others. I got a Ranger to the highest level, I like their abilities despite the pet mechanic being kind of flawed - they can't do a whole lot other than die all the time. Bears make pretty good offtanks when soloing, though.

I'd have to say Elementalists were the most fun of the classes I tried. Mesmer was also pretty interesting, with their ability to create clones and detonate them for damage and to inflict conditions. I quite enjoyed playing staff Mesmer, which was basically a condition factory on allies and enemies alike. (If you haven't heard about it already, which skills you have in GW2 depend on the weapons you have equipped, as well as your class and utility skills purchased with points as you level up - there's hundreds of weapon skills and at least ten combinations those can be configured in for each class, with the dual-wielding mechanic.)

Can't wait to play more - the game's still in beta but it feels more complete than any other MMO I've played. (Which is not a lot, other than F2P stuff.)

[jc_foster]

I had to miss most of last week's event due to shooting in a pool tournament (curse being one match away from a trip to Vegas! :V), but even the May event -- lag, overflow issues, and all -- got me pretty excited for what they'll have ready for us on release. One thing's for sure, though: I want my smart-mouthed Asura elementalist now.