For those interested in the Ranger class I can recommend these two links:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/41035-pet-guide-known-pet-locations/
None
2002
Any idea if there’s going to be an end of beta event tonight? I’m trying to decide if I want to stay up and… Alright, that’s a complete lie. I’m totally staying up. But I guess I’m wondering if I should be expecting something.
of course there is. They post info about it on their website, forums and facebook.
It might have been my connection. I had no problem browsing the web but maybe the game needed more bandwidth than I was getting.
Overall I think it’s a slick game. I just may be a bit burned out on MMOs, especially fantasy MMOs. The whole running around bashing mobs thing didn’t do a whole lot for me. I’m really tired of it no matter how nicely it’s dressed up. I think Secret World will be my next MMO just for a different atmosphere and a different questing experience.
I’m sitting here and I can’t even decide if I want to log back in to GW2 one last time before the beta is over.
I felt similar to you. I was badly burnt out on MMO’s after WoW. Spending 4 hours a night in a raiding guild does that after 4-5 years. ;) SWTOR brought me back but it was shockingly vanilla and did not bring anything new to the genre and I have given up on that game.
I went in with an open mind to both TSW and GW2. TSW is a refreshingly great MMO I almost passed over and it is one I will definitely be playing on a frequent basis.
GW2 absolutely shook me out of my MMO apathy. From BWE1 I was hooked. Like in TSW I had to unlearn many vanilla MMO bad habits. Having extensively played three BWE’s in GW2 I find it superb. I think ArenaNet has found a good balance with this game. The emphasis is on fun and removing all the boring crap that has infested MMO’s over the last 5 years.
As a casual MMO it fits the bill perfectly. The world building is sublime, the sound and music are excellent, and the combat system is exciting and different. I can see myself easily spending a couple of hours per night playing this.
I found that disabling Crossfire improved my FPS - A LOT. It was really sluggish before that - and I was almost about to rage-urinate, but I’ve learned the hard way how worthless Crossfire seems to be - so I disabled it to test the results.
It was smooth sailing from then on out. We’re talking constant 40-60 FPS with max settings. I’m running with 2600K, ATI 6990, 6GB DDR3, SSD, etc.
I won’t ruin the mood by going into details about my opinion, but suffice it to say that the game still isn’t for me. But I will say that I’m absolutely amazed by the Human main city. Absolutely incredible scale - and the vistas in the game are really something. Didn’t like the Sylvari area, to my surprise. It had the colors - but not the beauty. Not sure how to explain it, but it wasn’t that same feeling I got back in Ashenvale or Rivendell.
Even if it’s not made with someone like myself in mind, I find the B2P concept impossible to resist - given how huge the world seems to be. Even if I end up bored after a few days/weeks (likely) - it would still have been worth it. I also keep expecting to “get it” - because I have this odd feeling there’s something there that hasn’t clicked, but which CAN click, given the right mood and disposition.
Oh, I hear you guys about how it’s not a DikuMUD - and I like to believe I can enjoy other kinds of games - seeing as I used to be glued to the screen back in 1982 with Manic Miner.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that Crossfire thing - and I assume it could work for SLI as well. It’s not the first game to have a dramatic performance increase after disabling this.
Reldan
2007
From discussions here and elsewhere I’m inclined to think one of the issues with the game is that it’s not particularly well understood what exactly there is to do and, more importantly, what the point is. I put together a guide of sorts to try and help players new to the game better under this “big picture” stuff. What are the different things you can do and what do you get for doing them.
It’s too large to post here, so you can read it here. Hope it helps!
I spent a lot of hours in the beta this weekend and I’m quite impressed. Combat is much more interesting than standard MMO combat, dynamic events feel more natural than old style quest systems, and the world-building is sufficiently unusual to stand out from the crowd.
Technically the game also seems in fairly good shape. I had no crashes during the weekend, only one disconnect, and the framerate was quite smooth even in crowded areas. I did experience a few graphical glitches but not enough to really bother me.
If there’s one thing I would nitpick it’s that there’s no good way to see what some of your skill actually do. I am particularly thinking of chain skills here. Chain skill are actually three different skills that the game cycles through automatically. Only the first of the three normally show up when you hover your mouse over the icon. The description of the other two will briefly show if you keep your mouse over the icon as you actually use the skill, but then you need to be a really fast reader. Alternatively you could record a short fight with Fraps, alt-tab out of the game and then pause the video to figure out what your skill does. That really shouldn’t be necessary.
If only they could combine dynamic events with the story-telling of TSW/TOR - and they’d really have something. I guess I need more underpinning for what I do when levelling in my MMOs.
Had a great time this weekend playing a number of classes. Played Mesmer a fair bit on Friday, then rolled a Ranger on Saturday and ended up going to WvWvW for a couple hours with him. On Sunday I rolled an Engineer and that was much more fun (I even got a black dye drop with the Engineer at like level 3, so he looked awesome from the get go). I’m definitely going to suffer from alt-itis here.
Yeah, I think I’m just tired of leveling. I’m leveling in GW2 not because I’m hooked on the game and want to see what happens next but because I want to make my character better. I’m just tired of that being what drives me through the game.
I can see myself being in a different frame of mind at some point and wanting a good fantasy MMO and getting GW2. I just hope if an expansion or two is out there will be a package deal. I probably won’t jump in if the cost is something like $120 for the base game and a couple of expansions.
Anyway it seems like a really solid game. I think it will do well and will hold onto a lot of players provided the endgame is good. I’m glad I got a chance to play it this past weekend.
I like levelling as a means of balanced progression (as in, it shouldn’t feel like a grind - but it also needs to actually be there and reward you in an evolutionary fashion to qualify) - which is how the core of the RPG differentiates itself from the core of the adventure game.
But if the adventure aspect isn’t very good - and I honestly think the GW2 story seems really bad - then levelling loses a lot of what’s supposed to sustain it.
Then again, maybe my number one mistake is to think of GW2 as an MMORPG - instead of just an MMO with a few RPG elements.
KevinC
2013
Do you mean RPG in the traditional sense or the CRPG sense? If the latter, I find it’s plenty of RPG for me personally. I don’t feel like it’s RPG-lite or anything, it has better character customization than most MMOs I can think of and getting new utilities/traits as I level is fun.
As for story, I’ve never cared for them in games. Any game. I love my stories, but when I’m in the mood for one I like to sit down with a good book or an excellent HBO series or a movie here and then. Games I play for the interactive medium, story elements tend to just irritate me and get the in the way of the gameplay. I guess what I’m saying is, GW2 might have a really bad story but I wouldn’t know because I skip past it all as quickly as possible. :D
I didn’t get that far in my story quest, but of what I did do nothing grabbed me. I was just as happy to run off and help farmers as I was to continue my story quest. It struck me as generic fantasy.
I have one other concern about the game – I hated the water areas in WoW. I am worried the story quest in GW2 will make us play in the water. Now, maybe in GW2 I would like it but there’s something about adding the up and down directions that I don’t like as a playing experience.
Then again maybe the water stuff is optional and your story quest never takes you there.
KevinC
2015
I thought the water stuff was entirely optional, but I think the interview I heard that in was coming from a leveling perspective, not a personal story perspective.
To be fair, I think the water aspect - from what I’ve seen so far - is truly excellent for GW2. Looks and feels great.
I’d almost say they spent TOO much time doing that well, where they might have expanded on the non-water arsenal and stuff - but that would be silly, as I’ve been wanting a decent underwater segment in my MMO since forever.
That’s one of the reasons I’ll buy this game regardless, because I love the idea of underwater exploration.
Final BWE is over and I miss it already. Had a great time once again. Played elementalist some more and tried out engineer before going back to my favorite class: the guardian. Can’t wait until launch. I can definitely see myself playing this one longer than my usual stints in new MMOs.
In regards to the underwater stuff. Personally, I hate underwater combat because my depth perception is really poor when it comes to 3 dimensions in video games. But the art and world design teams have done such an astounding job at bringing the world to life, that I look forward to exploring under the water as well as on land.
I have disliked water areas in every game so far, but I think in GW2 it feels fine.
Got from the start to the end of my personal story this BWE (Sunday). It basically ended ‘demo mode’ at level 16 (Quest was 18, but w.e.). I think they still have some work to do when it comes to the difficulty of the quest.
For instance, the ‘hardest’ fight I had during questing was one of the easier ones, whereas some of the “introduction” fights during the story quest had me resurrect 7 times before I managed to complete it… when I was already DOWNED, but since you can still attack for a little while when downed I managed to slay my foe…
I really dislike the movement “Penalty” on some of the classes, while others have runspeed buffs. It reminds me of playing world-pvp back in WOW below level 40, when Hunters and druids and Shaman had runspeed buffs and everyone else were ‘easy pickings’.
As a Thief I used ranged (very very short ranged) arrows to try to warp forwards a bit, but it was never enough to get away from buffed players. Perhaps you can get boots or something that give you HASTE… in which case, that is the best item in the game :)
KevinC
2020
Unlike WoW PVP, though, if you’re a slow warrior with your gap-closer on cooldown, you just pull out your rifle and shoot the nambypants’ face off so at least they can’t kite you to death! :)
