Guild Wars 2 Beta

For anyone that has not seen, they have opened a beta signup!

https://beta.guildwars2.com

It is only open for 48 hours, so if you are interested, hurry up and sign up for it!

Thank you :3
Signed up

While I find GW2 interesting, I really have no time already between everything I want to do. So I'm skipping this. Will continue to play SWTOR, Minecraft, focus on preparing Whitestar for Tera, and write my Dungeon&Dragon scenario.

Well, this is just a signup, no guarantee that one would be accepted. Just thought someone might be interested in it.
Also, be aware that it would be under heavy NDA.
First rule of the beta, you do not talk about the beta.
Second rule of the beta, YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE BETA.
No but seriously, we wouldn't even be allowed to tell each other if we got accepted. So yeah. :P

Ah cheers!

Signed as well

Ohh well...Would love to try a Sylvani, I've sign up too!

Elloa wrote:Ohh well...Would love to try a Sylvani, I've sign up too!

Lets hope they add them in before any closed beta then, they weren't in the press beta last weekend.

Also, 1h left for this signup, so last chance if anyone are interested! :)
(There will probably be more signups at a later time also tho)

Apparently, the first Guild Wars 2 closed beta test will happen at the end of Mars.
That's very close to my birthday, dare one hope? :P

Signed up as well.

Did any of you got in? Would be nice to read some unbiased opinions. Altho nda might prevent that.

It would be a breach of NDA to answer that if anyone got in, so yeah. :P

If you know the contents of the NDA doesnt that mean that you are in?

But ok I wont ask further questions :p

...not really. They have been VERY clear that you would not be allowed to talk about the beta AT ALL; and that includes if you are in it. It is in the FAQ on their site.

By signing the NDA, you agree to not disclose that you are a participant in a Guild Wars 2 Beta Event and to not disclose any information about the content. Breaking the NDA can lead to legal proceedings.

And here I thought I found a loophole. Damn them!

For who is into this, Friday starts the first public beta weekend for GW2:

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-beta-weekend-event-is-coming

SO, out of curiosity, how many here will be trying GW2 out during the beta this weekend? I will try it some, at least.

I've not got the beta, and I've really no time to spent on anothe rgame than Tera. I'm already overhelmed by stuff to do!

i will , better i have tried it and it was really good , i had a great time playing it

Tried it too. Its a bit overwhelming. Pretty hard since you get one shotted by every other mob if you dont dodge xD.

It as a storyline like swtor which is pretty entertaining.

The dynamic events are really nice, you just walk through the world and stuff to do just happend.

I had heard you leveled way too fast, but 1h30 of play gave me only lvl 4 xD (in tera thats enough to get to lvl 11)

I like it, but there were quite the login issue on this beta, after the 1h30 first hours i loged out and coulnt login anymore xD

Did not try pvp yet though.

Lets see how i feel after a few more sessions xD

Okay, some first impressions from me as well:
First of all, the current state of the client is an UNSTABLE PIECE OF CRAP! Wowza. Huge login-issues, lag spikes, general lag, framedrops, it has it all. So it still needs work.

It is noticeably harder than TERA. Granted, this can most likely be attributed to me sucking at the combat system, but stuff in the starting area can EASILY kill you if you don't learn to dodge asap - and that does not really happen in TERA. :P
I followed an event chain in the Charr starting area, first of all there was like 10+ people doing an event, and since it was a "clear the area of enemies" type the area was SWARMING with enemies. Lots of fun. A bit later we ran into a champion-mob, i was lvl 3 he was lvl 5. He one-shotted me, if i tried attacking him. ^^'

About the leveling speed, this can also be attributed to me not exactly playing optimally, but it does not feel THAT fast. TERA is wayyy faster. I got to lvl 5 in the 4 hours or so i played, in TERA, with 4 hours you are likely closer to lvl 15 than 5. :P

There is a personal story, nothing as fancy as SWTOR but i like it nonetheless. It got me to care (or hate, your commanding officer is a serious jerk) about the characters, and what would happen next. You can't only do the personal story tho, since it's level will go up faster than yours.

All in all, what i tested about the PvE was really good. Have not tried the PvP yet ether, so we will see about that later.

Guild Wars 2 is a WAY harder game than Tera, some normal monsters can easily 1 shot you if you screw up, and you really need to be mindful of every and one of your actions, this holds especialy true if you are a melee heavy user, although it does come with its own set of benefits.

But yeah, the client atm is as tsuku says, an unstable piece of poopie D:

And people, remember random events dont really start happening till the lv 15+ areas since the first area is pretty much to help players get a feel of the game and learn the basics :3

The events get WAY WAY WAY better once you hit lv 15 aprox.

Okay, some final thoughts on different stuff in GW2:
(Incoming wall of text, so beware!)

PvE:
To me, "questing" (by that i mean doing the events) in GW2 is wayyy more fun than in TERA, for several reasons:

1) It's not a complete faceroll, you actually get some challenge from the very beginning. You actually can't just pull every mob in the vicinity and AoE them down. In TERA, questing alone just isn't that fun. It is here, mainly because of how the events work.

2) Content Scaling. This is awesome for a lot of reasons, it makes sure that events stay reasonably interesting even with a lot of people, and even better PLAYERS SCALE TO THE AREA THEY ARE IN. So you can play with any other player regardless of level. That means that i with a lvl 40 character can play with a friend that just started and is lvl 1, and it will not turn into a faceroll. That is REALLY awesome.

3) The events themselves. In TERA, if I'm out questing, i don't really want other players around, It's bothersome if they kill all quest mobs and you can never tell if one is going to turn outlaw and just flat out kill you. In GW2, events gets more fun if there are more people there, and it even fosters impromptu coordination between players. For example: In the first Norn area, there is a group event in some caves (IE, an event that can't be done alone), to kill some overseer dude. I was in the tunnels, and there was a bunch of other players there. One of them moved towards the group event, i followed, and a few others followed me. So we killed some mobs, buffed and healed each other, helped each other up again if one got downed, and killed that event mob - all this without a single word being said between us until afterwards. Lots of fun, and again, REALLY awesome.

Even the part that was more classical quests, your personal story, i enjoyed. It is nothing nearly as fancy as SW:TOR, but playing as a Charr, kicking your uber-jerk captains ass and then starting to rebuild your warband was a lot of fun, and i liked the characters and actually want to know how it continues.
This is a super-instanced part btw - every time you go to do part of the quest, you enter an instance basically.

I can't speak of anything truly raid-like tho, because i haven't done any. :P

PvP:
I could not try the World vs World, it was not up for whatever reason. I did a whole bunch of battlegrounds tho. There is only 2 right now, Battle of Kyhlo (the one in like all previews so far, town with a clocktower in the middle), and forest of whatever. Both work the same way, 3 capture points that generate score, player kills give score, first to 500 score wins. They max out your lvl and give you gear and skills when you join, so they basically level the playing field in that regard. That is boring since you cant twink yourself up and kick everybody's ass, but good since you wont have to deal with those annoying people that join from the lower end of the lvl bracket with crappy gear and thus cant do anything.
I'm not completely convinced of the class balance, for example as an engineer it seems flat out impossible to even come close to beating a thief, but that might be me sucking at it as well. All in all, its fun, but still needs work, i found a couple of bugs, and there is a HUGE "learn 2 play" factor involved, in the forest battle it spawns 2 boss-mobs, that gives 50 points if you kill them. NOONE kills these. They can't be (or at least are very hard) to take solo, but it does not take that many people ether - pretty sure 2 is enough, in most cases. So yeah. :P
One good thing is also that you don't die that easily, in TERA you get one-shotted WAY too often in PvP, that does not seem to happen here.


Random stuff:
Someone asked me if the world felt big; i still haven't played so much to give a truly definitive answer, but i can say it does not feel small to me at least. From the impression i got, i don't think it's smaller than TERAs even. It's hard to say it feels truly big tho, the main thing here is the teleport system; basically, if you have visited a checkpoint, you can teleport there (for a price) from ANYWHERE, just by opening the map and clicking on it. So it cuts away a lot of travel time. This does hurt the feeling of size for the world, but i still like it, because spending like 5-10 min just going from A to B is simply not fun, and I'd rather not do it.

The skill required to play some classes is kinda high. For example, the elementarist has 4 different attunements (earth, fire, water and air surprisingly enough), each which gives him different skills. So if he has a staff, that gives him 20 different skills, and it also does stuff like change your self-heal and such. And each element works differently, fire is big damage and AoE, water is AoE and AoE heals, earth seems to be defense buffs and moving players around, and air gives some AoE and speed buffs. So learning when to use what and when to switch will definitely take some work.

Something i don't like is that they for whatever reason decided to change the color coding of the different rarities of weapons - for example, uncommon items is often green, in GW2 they are blue. So green items are better than blue. That is going to get confusing, and i can't really see a point in it.

Another really good thing is that the game will not have had any core mechanics changed halfway through, so you don't have to deal with the wonkyness that occurs when different mechanics are out of sync with each other (yes, I'm looking at YOU, fucked-up-beyond-belief-leveling-system-in-TERA!).


I think the major make-or-break point for people with this game will be the change in the group dynamics. With no holy trinity, battles become a bit more chaotic. And while you can play a supporting role, and you can heal, you can't be a primary healer, it will never be your job to keep someone else alive - they have to dodge and use their own heal still. And you flat out can't tank. So a lot will probably hinge on whether one likes that or not.
Also, the fact that the focus is more PvP than PvE. I don't know to what extent endgame raids and such exits, i know there are some huge world-bosses and such, but i don't really know what else there might be.

I THINK that is all. :P
All in all, i will play GW2. Quite a lot probably. If anyone has any questions about anything, ask away and I'll try to answer.

As an addendum;
If anyone here does NOT like Guild Wars 2 (yes, i know there are some :P), please post here and tell me why. It's entirely possible that I'm a bit one-eyed to stuff, so to speak, and just ignores stuff that is less good since i really do like it overall, or i might just have missed something completely. So i would love to hear some reasons why it is NOT good.

I can say that i deliberately chose to ignore a lot of stuff i reckoned was beta flaws, the client is crap as said, the animations still kinda suck and so on. So preferably, keep it to design things or other stuff it is not that likely they will fix for launch.

Tsukkie, the thief right now is bugged and many people abuse that bug hehe
But yeah, balance is not perfect atm with Necromancers being the top dog as current data shows ( on pvp ) but it WILL be balanced just as it was for gw1.

Let´s not forget gw2 is the worthy successor of the game with the widely considered best, most balanced pvp of the mmoworld up to date.

Caduceus wrote:Tsukkie, the thief right now is bugged and many people abuse that bug hehe
But yeah, balance is not perfect atm with Necromancers being the top dog as current data shows ( on pvp ) but it WILL be balanced just as it was for gw1.

Let´s not forget gw2 is the worthy successor of the game with the widely considered best, most balanced pvp of the mmoworld up to date.

Oh, that would explain it. Maybe not that surprising even. :P
Engineer was really hard to play with due to a lot of weirdness... for example, if you try to place turrets in the top floor / capture area of the clocktower in Battle of Kyhlo, the turrets fall through the freaking floor and ends up god knows where. They are still firing, but i don't think they hit anything.
Turrets are a really good early warning system tho. If someone comes close, they start firing, regardless of obstacles or anything, so it's easy to know if someone is trying to sneak up on you. :P