Guild Wars Nightfall Event Starting... Now!

Click here to download a client, get a demo keycode, and some background info on the expansion.

The background looks a tad cheesy, but at least it tries to explain the teeming swarms of human heros in every town.

I’m personally very excited about the new landscape, which will be a nice break from the hordes of N. European and Asian gamescapes I’ve been playing in recently.

The new classes look uuber too. PM me at Aeon the Poker or Aeon the Piglet (my usual pvp character names) if you are new to Guild Wars and would like some help and people to group with.

EDIT: The GW people said that there was an event problem last night, and that the event would start at 8. It has not started yet. I am a sad panda.

It’s started and I’m playing as Gemma Antares (I know, lame). I don’t think I’ll pick up the final retail since it seems like more of the same, but nothing wrong with a little free preview fun.

Man, these ‘hero’ henchment seem pretty cool.

They have their own selection of unlocked skills that you use to assemble the skill bar they use, You can choose their secondary professions, and you even get to allocate their attribute points.

Wow, and there’s even a slick little henchman widget that lets you choose general behavior settings, and apparently even forceably actively skills.

I was also not impressed overall, but I was busy, so I only had time to see the very beginning.

It feels a lot like “more of the same”, they reuse most of the ground textures (that it’s the part of art I like less in the game) the in-game cinematics are as lame as ever and the environments seem much less inspired compared to the previous two campaign.

The idea of the hero is very good and, to be honest, the only selling point for me. They should work on the interface some more and incorporate some of the features in Dungeon Siege (the first). So that you can set different formations on the fly and overall spacing between each member instead of going with an hardcoded default one. It’s something that irked me playing through the previous campaigns.

I don’t like much the new races, in particular some choices/tricks to simulate “african” hair (the graphic coders should work to try to solve those glitches with the alpha transparences).

What is very pretty is instead the new female dance with the skirt fully animated. It’s something that must be seen. It’s also kind of good the new noob elementalist dress ;p

The few new animations are usually good.

I have the impression that with Faction there was much more work behind the scenes enhance the game. Nightfall doesn’t seem to have many “systemic” improvements and the setting doesn’t look so involving.

And I still wish they had worked on the “flaws” that Guild Wars carries since the very beginning (like the terrible rubberbanding around collision walls and objects, some very bad collision boxes, the possibility to add a 1-minute timeout to an instance so that if I get disconnected I can log in again without having to restart, controls and animations when changing quickly direction, synch between walking animations and terrain on the mobs and so on…).

Oh, I was forgetting that yesterday I also had terrible lag.

The servers are understandably crowded. I don’t imagine it’ll be a constant problem.

Anyway, the Hero is cool idea. I like having a constant second party member whenever I choose, and you can change the armor, skills, skill levels, everything, though I wish we could choose its class. I imagine we can in the full game, just not during the free preview. Your Warrior hero will actually have all of the warrior skills you’ve unlocked with any of your other toons.

Anyway, the game is still more of the same, but it’s good for the fans.

Uhm, can I rectify?

I’m playing some more and loving it.

The in-game cinematics are still kind of lame as I said, but at least now the guys mover their mouth and it is an improvement.

The Hero interface and controls are really good. The idea is well implemented and lots of fun to use. You can unlock different NPCs and can use up to three at once. You can select aggressive, defensive or passive behaviours and template and subjob them as a normal character.

They level along with you, their armor auto-upgrade, while you have control on the weapon they use (can give them your stuff).

You can also give them waypoints and the same to all your other generic henchmen.

The only thing that misses is a way to set the formation. The rest is well designed and implemented. UI and all. Good work.

I’m playing with a dervish woman and it became a lot of fun after more scythe attacks were unblocked. I like the design and feel. I have an enchantment that I can cast on me (so no bothering with targeting) and it gives me a bonus to the health, when it wears off it heals me for double that bonus and can then be used as “fuel” for other scythe attacks. What I like is the fact that it has no trade-offs. I hate the kind of spells that give you a bonus while applying a malus to something else.

But the true love is about PBAoE attacks. The scythe doesn’t damage just your target, but all the hostiles one that dare to be near you and along with the standard attacks you also have PBAoE spells. Again, no need to bother with targeting, you just trigger the effect and it damages everyone around you. I loved these since the ice wizards in DAoC. What is even more cool is that they also have side-effects that trigger 20 seconds later on all targets hit, one puts them on fire, the other slows them down.

So I have this woman that fights in melee with a whirling scythe and with cool PBAoE attacks. It’s just great.

I also have noticed a skill that gives me 25% to walking speed and attacks. In other games they would have just made the running animation 25% faster and it would have looked horrible. Instead here they use a dedicate animation.

I like a lot the animations, very cool, but it could have been a DREAM if instead of seeing each attach separately they would have chained the animations to flow seamlessly from one to the other (right now she attacks, wait, and then attacks again). God of War isn’t that far, really.

Sorry I haven’t said anything, but I’ve been busy playing. Soldat, a guildy of mine, and I have almost beaten the preview. Its been pretty fun.

Lt. Cmdr Aeon the Poker at yer service.

The in-game cinematics are still kind of lame as I said, but at least now the guys mover their mouth and it is an improvement.

Haha thats the first thing I noticed.