2021

Interesting, I had completely different experience. This is probably the first MMO where I completely didn’t care about leveling. I was playing the game because it was fun finding all those events, exploring the world, participating in the story, etc. There were several “Holy cow, I am level X already? When did this happen?” moments and I love it.

Oh and exploring in this game is just the best. I found some really cool stuff/places. Once I was really amazed when I found that lava cave in Sylvari area, the one with a cool jumping puzzle. I’ve been exploring some caves and found a couple really small ones with nothing interesting there and then was getting into the third one and the screen darkened all of a sudden, I make a turn and go “Holy shit!”. It’s not often I get genuinely surprised by a game.

It was my 3rd BWE and every time they go in the same way. Roll a char on Friday, get into the world, tons of players everywhere, can’t fucking kill a mob by myself to see what my skills do - always someone is “helping”. Then I play a little, get into more remote areas and the game finally starts to shine. Fighting world bosses with 3-4 random strangers is surprisingly fun after about lvl 10 or so, when people start getting some idea on how to play their char. There was one boss in the Azura area, that wiped our little “group” a couple of times, forcing us to stop doing the usual low-level zerg rush and think about the fight. It was really rewarding finally killing him.

The game really starts to shine after about lvl 10. The map opens up a bit and you don’t see players everywhere. The mobs become tougher and you can’t pull 3-4 of them at the same time anymore. Mobs also start getting some interesting abilities forcing you to play better to overcome them. Events also become more difficult and some of them even fail, which opens some alternative branches for them, really cool.

BTW, a piece of advice. When you complete a dynamic event (not a heart event), stick around for a bit, listen to the NPCs. Often these events have multiple steps, escalating in difficulty and telling a bit of a mini story. It’s funny how often we’d complete an event, everyone would run off and I am there all alone for the next step. I guess players got really trained by other MMOs to not pay any attention to what’s going on in the world and instead react only to markers on the map.

Another cool thing. I was passing by some town and one of the guards, all of a sudden, said something like “Can I have a word with you?”. I was like, “WTF? Ok.” I initiate a conversation with him and he tells me that some time ago some dude went north to do some stuff and he is not an adventury type and could probably use my help. I ran in that direction and, shortly after, I see the dude going somewhere with an escort event attached to him. If you pay attention to what’s around you, you will find some cool stuff.

This game is doing so many things right, end of August can’t come soon enough.

2022

Speaking of personal stories, I enjoyed the Azura one the most. It’s not as “high fantasy” as other races, has some funny and interesting characters and dialogues. In general, I like how Azuras are not cute floppy eared bunny people. They are snarky and mean little bastards. But in a good way. :)

2023

As a Thief, you have tons of ways to shake pursuers. It’s not just about speed. Use your stealth skills and the terrain. As well as any crippling abilities you might have (particularly caltrops or tripwire).

But you’re right, looking a the skills, it does seem like Thief has the fewest ways to get the swiftness boon active.

2024

Short bit here because it has all been said.

I wish this was coming out tomorrow. Who needs to “level” or grind? I am perfectly happy running around saving the world by jumping into dynamic events. If I level, well great but it is generally more of a surprise than an end.

Exploration- 3 cheers for real rewards for actually exploring the area.

Wow is this thing pretty…the human city is indeed amazing.

I was surprised how much I like the Necro and how little I liked the tree people.

I did no crafting or ah’ing so I can’t comment on that. But I did enjoy the personal stories and liked the way you set up your character by the set of answers you choose at character creation.

Oh, and the 2 currencies- I really like the addition of karma points as currency. It gives a player a reason to do the “helping” quests as well as the normal types.

And no monthly fee? Sticking with my pre-order.

2025

Yea, the no sub thing for me is huge. While I burned out on the WoW model a long time ago, there were still occasional moments where I wouldn’t have minded popping in for a few minutes to play a BG or two or hang out with friends for an hour. If I’d been able to do that without shelling out $15 for a whole month up front, who knows, maybe I would have gotten hooked for a little while again.

ArenaNet is doing something really smart by having a WvW game similar to DAOC but divorcing it from a subscription fee. That alone, I think, is going to keep population numbers healthy for a lot longer than most MMOs, especially these days.

Regarding crafting, I was actually pleasantly surprised by it since it hasn’t really ever been a talking/marketing point. I was expecting something very generic but I was actually pretty pleased with it. I mean, it’s not UO or SWG(pre-NGE) or EVE level of crafting, but I found it superior to the generic model that’s out there.

2026

I’m really counting on that, Stridergg, because zerging wasn’t fun at all. And my computer performed badly whenever there was a clump of people brawling.

What I’ve seen in BWE3 has largely confirmed my expectations and opinions about the game.

It’s no revolution but a really smart - and in parts brilliant - evolution of standard MMO design of the past 10 years.

Whenever I’m impressed by the game, it’s often from some small detail where I think to myself “why didn’t anyone think sooner of that? It’s so obvious!”.

For example the “send collectibles to storage” feature, the instant travel via waypoints, the display of AOE effects or the purposeful voice over in these hectic quests where in other MMOs you would either miss a lot of stuff because the text is only in chat windows, or you would stand around while reading and would have trouble to catch up with other players.

The biggest feature seems to be the dynamic event system with event chains. I say “seems” because I think it hasn’t really lived up to its full potential, yet. The reason for this is because the frequency of the occurrence of these events was drastically increased for the BWEs.

I got a small glimpse of its potential when I recaptured a fort with a few other players that was occupied by centaurs and the waypoint there changed from “contested” to “active” again. It was a feeling of making a difference in this world, however small.

Regarding the combat system I was a little worried at first because it is much more simplified and streamlined compared to GW1 for example. But I’m convinced now that it’s a step in the right direction. With the combat system being more action based, I can see that it will just work fine when I’m more familiar with it.

2027

and GW2 has a lot of new innovative features I really like.

The best part:
Adding your crafted gear into ‘collections’ (basically a nearly limitless bag with slots for nearly every material required for crafting (and pets!). Just gather something, right click and deposit it to your stack. Then, when its time to craft, you can pick it up.

No more having to juggle inventory slots (that will be filled with other stuff anyway). Great stuff!

2028

Does crafting make a difference in this game? I am not a big crafter, though I did get into with WoW now and then – mostly at the endgame when I was trying to max item stats for each slot.

2029

Not sure what you mean by does it make a difference. If you’re crafting, you’ll get more experience and you’ll have access to more gear upgrades. My understanding though is that at level cap, there isn’t one part of the game that gives the “best” gear statwise, you’ll be able to get equivalent stat gear from drops, quests (karma), crafting, pvp, dungeons, etc. The harder to get stuff (say, dungeon drops) may look cooler, though.

Plus there are some crafts (like cooking, maybe jewelry making) that get you stuff you can’t get elsewhere, I think.

Personally I just like to dabble in crafts that make sense for my character (like armorsmithing and weaponsmithing for a warrior) because it provides a relaxing activity, and forces me to go to the nice looking cities. Love Lion’s Arch the best, there’s a bank and every crafting station right in a ring around the Mystic Forge. Most of the other racial cities I’ve seen the bank is nearby, but more like a 30-45 second run from the crafting stations.

2030

Well, it’s not a central part of the game design and you could safely ignore it if you don’t care to bother with it. For me, I really enjoy crafting systems, so I went to check it out. It was providing me a means of keeping myself and my stable of a million alts equipped with various customized gear during my playthrough in BWE1. I liked having the RIGHT gear available, both in terms of item type and item stats.

One of the main things is crafting is not a pain in the ass. When harvesting, you share nodes. If you run into a copper vein, everyone gets to harvest from the node so there’s no more competition/stealing of resources. And since everyone has all the harvesting skills (you don’t have to pick and choose) and you get EXP for harvesting… well, it was easy enough to send those materials off to the bank and then craft up a storm whenever I was in town and wanted a break from adventuring.

I only played to L15 or so, so I don’t have extensive experience with it or anything, but I liked what I saw. It’s not revolutionary, but I thought the discovery/experimentation aspect of learning recipes/blueprints/schematics was interesting without being a pain in the ass (I didn’t feel like I needed to alt-tab to my browser and look up the list, since it was intuitive how to put stuff together). All in all, I’d rate it “better than WoW crafting”. No idea how it is at end game, but it’s a source of EXP and a change of pace from bashing monsters so I’m all for it.

2031

Thief gets the Signet of Shadows, which is a permanent 25% run speed buff just for having it equipped in a Utility slot (the Swiftness boon is only +33%), in their third tier of utility skills. This applies both in and out of combat AND it stacks with Swiftness as well.

You can unlock this skill with a minimum of 35 skill points, which can be done fairly early if you aim to do a lot of skill challenges.

Thief probably has the BEST run speed advantage of any class in the game.

On top of that, although it’s not as helpful in PvE for quite some time as I assume these are level 80 only, but in sPvP if you equip the full set of Centaur runes you get a 12s swiftness buff every time you heal… and thieves have a heal skill with just a 15s CD.

2032

Cooking is the “advanced” craft which produces consumables that provide temporary buffs in PvE and WvW. This one will probably matter in the long run.

Aside from being a source of XP, the rest of the skills provide high-slot bags and Best-In-Slot gear of your choice that you otherwise would have to find and spend Karma on - crafting may mean saving your Karma up to buy cool expensive stuff instead. Endgame it will let you make distinct and cool looking max-stat gear.

2033

Thieves can also get swiftness on every dodge which is huge. They can also get swiftness on every kill which is less huge.

2034

Location of the bank doesn’t really mean much now since you can access it from any crafting station’s screen.

2035

I played this weekend. My hands are busy just now with other games, and I am somewhat burned of RPG mmos, … but still launched the game. And proceed to have fun, because theres quality in the game.

I tried the starting areas of the small humanoid geek race, and the veggie race. Not a fan of the general design. I like big areas that make some sense to me, …ok theres a valley, and behind a mountain, and theres a city. The vegie and geek race areas looked exactly like a theme park. A atraction here, another here. No sense or rime. Not even a single huge building to focus everything. Yes, the veggie have the pale tree, but even that was not notewhorty.

What the geeky race need is some geeky class or geeky weapon or something, to feel truly geek. The engineer class is not geeky enough, is too steampowered metal, while this dudes are all software and crystals and golems. So its like you can roll this race, but you can’t play as this race. I could easy see how the areas of the veggie and the geek could be much better, but would need to have his own flavour of game. Why, as a geek, I can’t ask for a ion canon bombarding in a area? or remotely hack golems? needs more cyberpunk, why beggies can choose to sleep inside a fleur? need more dreamplace and nature love.

I liked the nord starting area, because feels like a tiny Skyrim. And the human starting area feel good too, like a dark RPG.

2036

Errr what now? I totally missed that. I knew you could send to it from bags, did not notice you could use it from crafting stations. Awesome!

2037

The “geeky race” can drop radiation fields, summon Series-7 and Series-D golems, and summon a Power Suit “which you or your allies can enter and use to combat enemies.” According to the Wiki, the power suit has the following abilities:

[ul]
[li]Punch [Punch.]
[/li][li]Launch Fist [Launch the fist of the hazmat suit at foe.]
[/li][li]Gatling Fists [Shoot a barrage of missiles at target foe.]
[/li][li]Whirling Assault [Spin the upper portion of hazmat suit, knocking back foes.]
[/li][li]Self-Repair [Engage the Hazmat suit’s self-repair mechanism.]
[/li][/ul]

There’s your geek stuff.

2038

Shit…maybe I will have to buy extra character slots. POWER SUITS?? Sweet!

2039

Also the golems in Rata Sum say ED-209 quotes when you try to talk to them.

2040

This is what happens when a non-Asura tries to repair the golems in the first zone : http://imgur.com/a/aW8ZD

:)