guild wars 2

Jake Bunce

Well-known member
300px-Normal_gw2logo.webp


Is anyone else following this game? I am really excited about it. It promises to be a refreshing experience for fans of the MMO genre. I made a big informational post on my forum about it. Here is the copy / paste:

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Highlights:
- MMO.
- free to play
- windows only
- currently in closed beta, release date not set.
- no holy trinity (no tank / healer / dps roles). All professions are equal in their role-capacity. All professions can heal and resurrect.
- dynamic quests. Basically that means quests come to you instead of the other way around. There isn't a strict quest progression through a zone. Rather you just come upon random quests while doing your own thing in the game.
- player-driven narrative and progression. Your character's narrative is written down as you play, so you can go back and read the story of your character. And thanks in part to dynamic questing, your character's progression is whatever you want. There is no strict progression path that all players must follow. You can even grind to max level doing nothing but pvp.
- content and level scaling. The content and/or level of your character is scaled appropriately. For example, you can help new characters do low level content, during which time your character's effective level is reduced so that you don't overpower the content. Similarly, you can choose to do higher level content which is scaled down for you. This means choice of content really comes down to player skill, not level, and there is no strict content progression. But of course harder content has better rewards.
- competitive and noncompetitive pvp. Competitive pvp is fixed and balanced teams. All participants are scaled to max level so everyone is equal. You can do competitive pvp with lvl 1 characters thanks to level scaling. The noncompetitive pvp is a 3-way realm v realm v realm where it's basically a ffa, not balanced.
- no flying mounts
- your primary 5 skills are dependent on your weapon and environment. For example, when you switch weapons from a sword to a bow your primary 5 skills change. When you go under water your skills change. Your other 5 skills (for a total of 10 active) are selected by you.
- no required grouping of players for normal content. Rather everyone who participates in an event or kill is automatically rewarded. There is no kill stealing and there is no need to explicitly form a group before doing content. Just do the content and you are rewarded without any extra consideration.
- you can dodge ranged attacks. Combat involves actual movement and using skills while moving.
- flat leveling curve.
- there are gnomes. :D

Primers:
(in general)
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(in general)
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(pvp)
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(gw2 v wow)
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Gameplay:
(pvp)
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(pve) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ttfOuxB6Gc
(pve) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnVGEYGE8hs
(pvp) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyMRoB8Xff8
(pvp) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxeffOuV_5o

Big playlist of informational vids:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5yQiouuX-c&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=SL

Complete presentation by dev (camera rip, low quality):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0rUHrJ7MAw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMLBn_1AdMs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65aVeMd9v88
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldThI7SKVp8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VLpW8DCXbo
 
I applied for the beta, and am ready to blackmail a few friends who work at ArenaNet for guaranteed betas for myself and my girlfriend (y).

I've been watching it since they first announced the way they were planning the game (With console elements), and that they didn't want it like a traditional MMO, which is the main reason I'm interested (I'm not a fan of Aeon or GW due to how grindy they are).
 
Looking forward to it as well it's put me in the spirit of playing the original a bit too, GW was always a great game and not even the fact it was free month to month, I'd probly pay for it if those chose to charge, but gotta love them that they don't :)
 
Thats the closest I've seen to a blatant ripoff of the Dragon Age logo.

Dragon-age-2-logo.jpg
GW2 has been in development much longer than Dragon Age, so no, it isn't a ripoff of Dragon Age. They've been advertising that dragon logo for years, before Dragon Age was released, or advertised.

Also, Dragon Age wasn't the first to use the dragon silhouette, and the GW2 logo looks closer to Mortal Kombat than it does to Dragon Age (Other than the colors/style).

Looking forward to it as well it's put me in the spirit of playing the original a bit too, GW was always a great game and not even the fact it was free month to month, I'd probly pay for it if those chose to charge, but gotta love them that they don't :)

They're going to have micro transactions like many of the F2P MMO games.
 
When I read the OP and saw "Free to play" I almost peed myself, then I realized he meant you pay for the game, then you don't have to pay to keep playing. :(
 
When I read the OP and saw "Free to play" I almost peed myself, then I realized he meant you pay for the game, then you don't have to pay to keep playing. :(

The price of the game is worth it, especially as it isn't like Diablo or WoW where things are essentially the same time after time. You can choose 3 storylines (Farmer, Commoner, Noble) and an overall goal (Joining the circus, finding your parents, finding your sister; the circus one is just hilarious with how serious they pass it off).

Different from other games is that you can level off of events entirely (I suggest this, as you get nearly no gold or experience from grinding). The game is relatively slow up till level 10, at which time you get traits which makes things go much quicker as you can then choose the play style you'll be using (Each class has different weapons that influence play style, the Necromancer especially). You can also get gold, experience and items from WvW PvP, and is the quickest way to level supposedly (I focused on PvE the last event).

You're also not stuck to specific play styles within a class as you are with WoW or other games; you can choose traits for a certain play style, or use weapons that are focused to that style. You also learn skills by using weapons, and they're all limited to that weapon (You can mix and match one hand weapons for the most part).

The graphics are amazing, some of the best I've seen for any game, and the resource usage is lower than pretty much every game I've used as well in comparison.

Overall, this is probably the only game that I've been excited about in forever, and the PvP is comparable to Diablo II in reliance on skill over wealth.
 
Game was opened up for pre-purchasers about 30 minutes ago, and will go live on Monday.

Both Dark Wizard and I are playing on Stormbluff Isles (y).
 
I'll probably grab it monday at the local store. There's no way I'm purchasing the digital download of it and waiting 10 years for it to download.
 
I'll probably grab it monday at the local store. There's no way I'm purchasing the digital download of it and waiting 10 years for it to download.

That's why you should have purchased the digital last month and gotten to play beta weekends and random stress tests.. Got to update each patch as it came out. I tried to reserve you Shelley just now, but the name is already taken.
 
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