Guild Wars

[Girma]

World Preview Event (http://www.guildwars.com/preview/default.html)
October 29th - 31st

I've never really stuck with any MMORPG for more than a month or so, but it doesn't mean I wont give a new one a shot... especially when it's one that wont charge me a monthly fee.

[Jacob Singer]

I really, really liked the demo the last time they did one of these free weekends. Hope to find some time to play it this weekend between the Halloween festivities, I want to see how the polish is coming along. I like the fact that the combat zones are "instanced" just for your group.

[chagrin]

The E3 promotion they did was great. I've been looking for a good coop hack and slash RPG for a while now. Tired of Diablo 2, sick of putting up with Sacred's bullshit, and not willing to subscribe to a game I may only play for a few hours a week.

Come on, Guild Wars! Live up to my unreasonable expectations!

[Jacob Singer]

This is up and running right now (a day early), and man, is it a pretty game. And it even kept my login and character names from the last demo.

[Girma]

Well, the beta is up and running, off I go... Anybody else planning on getting in on the trial?

[CTDeLude]

Thanks Jacob for letting me know about this so long ago...

[mongycore]

promised to lay off the fucking games. gave it a brief whirl tonight and it's a pretty damn impressive game to get lost in....easily trounces the fuck out of Dungeon Siege.

so how do you hook up with other people. Can you choose the server you want to play on...or do you link up via entering buddy lists/friends and join their game - if so - what are your user names?

mine...Mongy Core...

the game definitely stresses teamwork as my poor shlub of a guy couldn't beat that one boss on his own, as the boss kept healing himself, forcing a stalemate.

look forward to the finished product.

[Girma]

You know, this might be years of Blizzard worship talking, but for some reason I find the third person camera angle used in most MMORPGs to be distracting and hard to handle.

Either they don't work too well with the keyboard and mouse, or I've just got the that isometric perspective ingrained into my psyche.

[Astromarine]

I've had no problem with the camera, I used only the W key to advance and controlled the rest with the right mouse button. Considering that you can press CTRL to make the names of the enemies show up for easy targetting (or just use Tab to cycle through enemies) it makes for a pretty simple and intuitive control scheme. Using the turn keys is a pain.

Overall, I loved the game. So much so that I already preordered, so I am entitled to the beta preview events, on the first weekend of every month (NEXT WEEKEND).

[chagrin]

Astromarine:
So, if you preorder you get to play the beta of the game? Where did you find out about that? It seems like an excellent deal.

[Astromarine]

not quite but close. There is one weekend per month where they will open their servers to the beta events, much like this one but open only to people with invitations. These invitations come with preorder boxes. You can find these boxes at ebgames.com, gamestop.com, interactcd.com, amazon.com, etc. It comes with quite a few extra swag even besides the beta keys.

Edited to add: http://www.guildwars.com/preorder.html

[chagrin]

Excellent.
I had a good time with this game during the preview weekend. It's basically a modernized Diablo 2 with more substantial plot and very streamlined cooperative play. You can tell they put a lot of thought into what is and isn't fun about playing with others online.

Case in point: if you want, you can hire henchmen instead of (or in addition to) a party consisting of players. That makes it so much easier to just play around for a half an hour when you can't find any of your friends.

I'm definitely preordering this guy. I want that extra one weekend a month.

[chagrin]

I played through the Beta weekend and I am utterly addicted. This captures all of the appeal of Diablo 2 (I just need to go up one more level/find one more crafting item/finish one more mission, then I can rest) with a stunning engine. It's apparent that the developers have really thought about what makes MMORPG's fun and what is just annoying (ie, interacting with other annoying players when you just want to get the quest done). Anybody else play last weekend and have any thoughts?

Some pro:
Being able to hire henchmen when you don't want to have to bother with finding human companionship.
Great maps.
Very interesting story and game world.

Some cons:
Selling and trading gets tiresome; basically go into a town and start spamming and wait for a response.
Need more skill and item variety. As it is, crafting armor is difficult and it's basically limited to "Do you want the level 5 armor or the level 10 armor?"
There needs to be more benefit for exploring regions outside of town. It's exciting to stumble upon some new town, but in the Beta there's basically nothing available.


I may have listed more cons than pros, but comparing the two quantitatively ignores that this game is more addictive than heroine. I'm sold.

[Astromarine]

you are wrong. In the beta there was TONS of stuff in explorable areas. You could basically cross the entire world from Ascalon to Lion's Arch without doing any missions etc. I had a two or three hour trek to the Gates of Kryta mission, all through explorable areas.

You are right on the item content. The problem is that this is so by design. Only weapons and shields are picked up from monsters, all armor will be craftable. Keep in mind, there are several different sets of armor, starting with level 10 armor. You just have to know where to find the crafters ;)

The main character customization, though, is supposed to be the skills. You can have lots and lots of them, but can only USE 8 at a time, as you found out.

How many skills exist in the game, you ask?

Oh, about 450.

[chagrin]

I think I should have qualified my complaint about explorable areas: in the BETA there needs to be more to do. Yeah, the world is big, that's awesome and everything, but right now there's not really much reward for exploring. Sure, I could explore my way to the next town, but I know I'll get there eventually. What I really want is to stumble across something through exploration that doing the main quests will never take me to. For example, exploring south of Ascalon, we came across the Sanitarium. It's nifty that it's there, but it serves no purpose; there are no side-quests to do there. I assume that in the finished version, there will be more substance there, I'm just petulant and want it NOW.

I liked the crafting system, with the exception of bartering with other players. As I said in my earlier post, waiting for somebody to respond to your repeated messages of 'WTT for parchment! Have ingots, bones, etc' got boring. I want an auction or something, where I can place the items that I know I won't need up for sale and then walk away.

Of course, my character only got up to level 8 over the weekend, so maybe as the game progresses something changes this dynamic. Who can say? I am anxiously awaiting the next beta weekend.

[Astromarine]

oh sure, I agree with you. I think there are some areas which are cool to explore, like the place with the Bone Dragons. Still, the majority of it is just normal wilderness. There ARE quests in there, though, even if they're few. Remember the North Kryta in the WPE? there were at least two quests in that area alone, and in the beta there was one guy in one of the Ascalon missions that asked you to go into an explorable area to give a message to his wife. I guess there are, or will be, a lot more of that kind of stuff.

The devs have said in an interview that chat filters and a better way to trade stuff will be implemented. actually, since that interview took place ingame, inside Lion's Arch, the dev saw firsthand how necessary it was ;)