Guild wars just ran a weekend beta pvp trial for it’s 2 new player classes, I missed most of it due to my comp acting up. Did anyone try out the new classes? I was reading about them in cgw and the ritualist sounds pretty cool.
I wanted to try it, but the classes were only usable as PVP only, on the new pvp island. If you made one, you started with no skills whatsoever. To get any, you had to unlock them with the faction and cash your main characters had already accumulated, or, alternately, try to grind faction with a seriously gimped character. Not my idea of a good time. If Arena.net wants to make me put in hours working to try and gain access to what boils down to a marketing show, fuck them. It’s a shame, too, I really would have liked to have tried out some of the assassin and ritualist skills, they sounded (since I was able to see were the names) awesome.
I played around with two of the ready-made assassin builds (A/W and E/A) and it seems like fun class that is different enough from the “core” classes. The teleportation skills especially might create some very interesting new strategies, since AFAIK there aren’t any similar skills yet in the game (disbarring Necrotic Traversal).
I didn’t have time to play any Ritualist characters, but seemed like a pretty varied hybrid caster with some damage spells, some healing spells and a lot of spirit summons very similar to the Ranger’s nature spirits.
Hmmm, well there were six new prebuilt characters that utilized the ritualist and assassin as both primary and secondary so you didn’t have to play with a “seriously gimped” character at all. I had quite a lot of success using the prebuilt characters in the arenas and even made decent tombs and gvg runs as well. Oh you don’t use cash to unlock skills with faction so not sure what you mean by that statement.
I liked the new classes, and a few of the premade builds were very good, perhaps to the degree where one might need to consider if some skill combinations do not become to powerfull. The premade R/A was very powerfull as designed, for example, and with a few factionpoint unlocks it became even more so. The ritualists were also very useful, especially since many people apparently never clued in how important it was to take out the more powerful spirits.
It is also nice that the early pvp arenas previously only accesible to pve chars ware now included amongst the team/random arenas.
I find the new character selection screen a little garish however.
Not when I logged in with my pre-existing copy of Guild Wars. There was nothing but the previously existing builds availible, or I could create a new assassin / ritualist.
There were a couple of prebuilt A/R mixed in with the old prebuilt PvP characters.
I looked. Not when I logged in and made a new pvp character, early early early in the morning of the first day. I didn’t see anything but the builds I was already familiar with.
I think the Assassin sucks just on the fact that their “look” is CLEARLY designed to appeal to the anime-loving crowd. Not the good anime either, the Saturday morning dubbed stuff. I mean… the hairstyles alone… argh.
Then it hadn’t gone live yet. The new splash screens and menus were up the day before the preview started.
I logged in with my existing copy and the new classes were there, pre-built and ready to be fiddled with.
To me, the look seems very influenced by Korean anime. I’ve been seeing a lot more of that lately. Or, at least, noticing a lot more of it.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the game’s entire motif is fairly Asian. I didn’t like it at first, but it’s grown on me.
Wasn’t their original business model to sell lots of expansions and not monthly fees? Isn’t this their first expansion, what, a year later?
Also, if they’re doing specifically Korean Anime characters, doesn’t that imply that their Korean base is pretty damn large?
I think the original plan was two expansions a year. In April (one year after the launch) they’ll be selling a standalone expansion for $50, so that sort of evens out.
I still don’t know if I’m going to buy the expansion, I like guild wars, but it’s so repetive that I can’t seem to play it more then 2 days in a row without needing a few days for a break.
Ugh…interest plummetting. I can’t stand anime art. Why are my western games trying for this look?
Guild wars graphics have always been like that. Did you escape noticing that the male avatars are just as feminine as the female ones? The only difference is they don’t show their midriff.
Or have breasts.
Yes it’s pretty clear the GW expansion is trying to cater to a more Asian or Korean audience. GW is also more naturally amenable to the Asian market - no monthly fees, so it’s probably fairly popular and easy to carry in the game centers or the “baaangs” (however they are spelled). As the “free” MMORPG it’s pretty well placed in the market right now.
I liked the Assassin class since it gives casters another option for melee other then to take the Warrior. The Ritualist seems like a kind of RotTK “Taoist Master” class, with a heavy influence from Chinese ancestor worship. I really didn’t have time to play with the latter class.
Has anyone else been having connection/downloading problems in the game today/lately? It’s been slow as mud for me.