So…my take after 31 levels of GW2… :)
The Good:
Hard to quibble with the overall “feel” of the game. From the minute you log in, the polish and clear-eyed systems development is apparent. Everything links together seamlessly to move your character forward and push things along.
The art style is gorgeous without going too hard for uncanny valley. Honestly, it’s not that far different from, say LOTRO with the high textures, but it does retain some of the “painterly” (as someone said upthread) feel of GW1.
WvWvW: Welcome to what might’ve been DAoC 2. Yesterday afternoon I joined with Ehmry Bay-ans for a take of the giant keep in the center of the Eternal Battlegrounds in WvWvW. It was all there: satellite groups fighting to control choke points and shut off supply, while a bigger main group put a battering ram on a wall while enemies pounded us from the ramparts. Eventually we knocked that gate down and an epic courtyard battle ensued, which we eventually won. Then it was a matter of trying to prevent re-spawning enemy players from getting inside while we put another battering ram on the central keep (and fought off more folks firing down from above, including boiling oil). Finally inside, we dispatched a bunch of nasty, level 80 veteran guards, and got to the central keep command room, where the champion commander tried to hold us off for about 10 minutes while straggling enemy players tried to get in and prevent it. It was total, controlled confusion and mayhem and fun, played without the lag of DAoC. In all the years since, I’ve still yet to find a game with the kind of compelling and fascinating PvP experience of old school DAoC RvR…but this might be it. It does everything Mythic did right back in the day, and corrects a bunch of stuff Mythic got wrong, especially lag. On my i5, I only had a few seconds of glitchy lag in the throne room thingy, and it quickly restored to a decent frame rate for the rest of the fight.
I love the lack of a quest hubs, and the way it pushes you forward in the game, and the way exploration is integrated to reward players with meaningful XP.
The crafting system is a thing of beauty. Whomever came up with the “discovery” system deserves an MMO commendation. Kudos too to the Anet team for making XP in crafting meaningful and plentiful. Too often in MMO’s crafting is a sideshow to advancing your character. Here, it feels like part of an organic whole with exploration and questing.
When they work right, the events are an amazing amount of fun to do. I was in a terrific “event chain” against Bandits in Kessex. First we had to kill a bunch of them outside their bandit mine thingy. Then we had to destroy their bandit heavy cannons aimed at a ship coming in from the sea, in a certain time limit. Then we had to interdict bandit supplies. (All of these are separate events, with medals awarded, btw.) Finally, the foreman of the mine decides he’s had enough. He’s a Champion, and we pounded on him for 10 minutes to kill him…only the fight wasn’t over. It was great fun, huge XP, and one of the most enjoyable things I’ve done in the game so far.
The Bad
Dear MMO developer: I know you think your underwater scenes are fantastic. Heck, they usually look gorgeous. Here’s the thing, though. It’s very easy for computer-controlled monsters to move in 3-dimensions. It is not so easy for human-controlled players to do that, which causes all sorts of targeting problems, especially against mobs who frenzy. Also: did I say it was easy to move computer monsters in 3d? Yeah I was kidding. GW2 has all sorts of pathing/line of sight problems in underwater encounters that result in a player being right next to a mob, firing off combat skills, and getting “Invulnerable” returned as a result (that usually means a pathing problem for the mob). Look, we’ve been to this movie before, we know how it ends. Underwater stuff just isn’t a whole lot of fun. It’s more frustrating than enjoyable, not least because underwater lacks the perspective of distance you get in overland fights. It’s a noble gesture. I get it. It looks great. It gives brand new weapon skills. The frustrations with pathing and targeting makes fighting and playing on dry ground far more enjoyable for me.
The Trade Post. How did this not get stress tested enough? Right now it feels like the lack of a Trade Post is really gimping crafters. I need low-level fine crafting items to advance my weaponsmithing. I have stuff for armorsmiths and leatherworkers. I tend to either hoard that stuff I can’t use or give it away. I’d love to sell it on the trade post and shop for the stuff I can use. I have the silver to afford it. Help me spend my money, ArenaNet!
I will confess to being a little disappointed with the skills system in the game. After the rich and wild variety of skills in GW1, I was expecting something similar. What I’ve found is that I’ve sort of settled on a couple of weapons I like, and so fighting tends to be me using the same buttons in the same order most of the time. I realize the actual skilling up happens with the skills on the right side of the health bubble, but for now it sort of feels a little like advancement lacks some of the “new toys to play with” excitement you get from other MMO skill trees.
The Ugly
The voice acting: there’s no way around this. After SWTOR and TSW, I’m spoiled. Even with what sound like professional actors, the dialogue readings are stilted and off-putting. I don’t think they asked Ted and Betty from accounting to do line readings, I think Ted and Betty from accounting worked as voice acting directors instead of pro’s. Also not a fan of the puppet theater dialogue breaks. It’s very Gabriel Knight, 1996, isn’t it? Compare that to the–admittedly occasionally goofy–kabuki theater of TSW, where the kinetics of having dialoguing characters moving totally helped sell their acting. Much of the acting here is just…cringe-able. (And don’t get me started on whomever made the sound/talk choices for Divinity’s Reach. I want to find the actor who does the hearty laugh and knock his head into the woman who does the “Uh-ah-ah-aaaaah” like she’s in a hentai game. Seriously, I spend as little time in DR as possible just so I can tune that crap out.)
The Guild mechanism sounds neat in theory, but the bugs have obviously been a headache.
Ditto for grouping with the overflow feature. Hopefully as the population levels up and spreads out, that diminishes.
Overall…I’m really, really enjoying the game.
