Guild Wars 2 BETA opinions

[Repefe]

I know I will be blamed hard... but I don't want to start anything wrong... just simple task - if you had to compare first 20 levels in gw2 and WoW - what would you say? What's better?

The only meaningful thing to do when leveling in WoW for me is running dungeons. Questing is the painful thing you have to go through till you hit lvl 15. PvP is so unbalanced I struggle to believe Blizz hasn't done anything about it till now ... not even when they can see how TOR can handle it so superbly. So that's my PoV.

In WoW it's LFG->dung->LFG->dung->LFG. In GW2 it's exploring the world, completing all the events, visiting all the points of interest, collecting all the skill points and PvP that works. But there are ppl who like leveling in WoW. I like leveling in TOR, the main story that is, but it's really bad in WoW for me.

[Deleted]

first 20 lvls grom gw2

i would even say they are better than lvl 1-80 in wow^^

[Varyk]

Could also be the "Run as Administrator" isn't checked.

This was my logic as well, I tried several times, then again on a separate machines and file locations as suggested by support, as well as temporarily disabling the firewall. I made several attempts at all of these and found no difference of outcome. Oh well, at least I'll be surprised upon the release.

[Avissos]

Probably a silly question but,

How on earth do you join WvWvW battles or GW2's version of battlegrounds ? I can't for the life of me find/see
any keybound shortcut, map icon related to it.

Thanks

[GW2lacky]

I know I will be blamed hard... but I don't want to start anything wrong... just simple task - if you had to compare first 20 levels in gw2 and WoW - what would you say? What's better?

Its apples and oranges, really. You already know how WoW is so here are my experiences that set it apart:

Just in the first 10 levels on my human Mesmer I've been in some pretty epic battles with anywhere from 10-35+ people. It feels like raiding and most of the battles are a lot of fun (although some of them feel over-tuned).

Objectives in different phases of the same battles can sometimes change quickly so it helps to keep an eye on the objectives to help the group succeed. Most groups I've been in seem to do pretty well at working together and being part of the action means being there when other people are and helping to complete the objectives (no raid times, gear checks, invites, etc). Half the group keeps centuars at bay while the other half runs irrigation parts from the battlefield to the owner...stuff like that since you can complete that phase doing either one but will win faster if you do both. The really hard battles you have people who will play as dedicated rez'ers because people will die...a lot.

I've been in battles where waves of bandits are coming at you from all sides and each wave crushes down on the group right after we've finished the previous one off and there's twice as many. There are bosses everywhere...in the world...and they are damn difficult to impossible to take down on your own. Some aren't too bad with two decent players and some require a decent sized group (the big troll guarding the skill-up in southern Queensland took six people both times I've done it now since he can almost one shot people).

As much as the game is based around exploration you want to level up to an acceptable point before moving on to the next area of a map. Mobs a few levels higher than you will destroy you with one or two hits and some mobs the same level still hit REALLY hard (damn overtuned trolls).

Also, the sooner you learn to dodge (not just backward but also to the side) as a part of each confrontation the easier the game gets. Most mobs have an ability they'll use during the fight that if you don't dodge it your health can suffer in a big way. Just going toe-to-toe like in WoW means dying or barely walking away from the fight. The game is harder than WoW as the penalties for your mistakes are massive.

That's just off the top of my head. I don't think one is better than the other as I really like WoW but GW2 is definitely different. I've played WoW, Rift, and TOR and they all have similar attributes...but GW2 feels like a different animal altogether. If I were to put them on a scale of similarity (not which is better) it would look something like this:

WoW...TOR....Rift.........................................................Tera............ ................GW2......

[Deleted]

Thanks for sharing opinions

[rezoacken]

I know I will be blamed hard... but I don't want to start anything wrong... just simple task - if you had to compare first 20 levels in gw2 and WoW - what would you say? What's better?

WoW only interest is the endgame. Leveling in WoW just suck. It's unchallenging, boring, and uninspired.

Gw2 on the other end worries me for the pve endgame but the leveling is SOOOO much better than wow I don't even know where to begin.

-It's challenging.
-Its' very active, you quickly have a lot of spells to play with and you must be alert to what you are doing
-You can go in any order you want and do quests on the way
-Some quests actually feel epic

On the other hand just for the leveling experience:
-Difficulty is sometimes badly balanced.
-Tutorial is needed. Be prepared to explore your interface until you get it.
-Crowds make heart-quests very boring

[Hellfury]

Tried in a friends house for 4hours ish.

It didnt wowed(no pun intended) me, tbh the combat feel abit slugish but I only tried the engenier can be diferent for other classes, saw my friends playing a mesmer felt more fluid thou The events are cool thou but they can be come boring and repetitive later on.

The graphics are nothing out of the ordinary even on my friend's high end machine with all maxed, felt abit flat, The art style not a fan but to be frank it works good and they did a good job in that

The Cash shop with the XP boosts turned me off abit, but was expected they got get money somehow.

Seems a fun game, bit overhyped, my experience was short to give a real impression but was expecting abit more right of the bat

[Azerox]

Amazing game, have leveled warrior mesmer and necromancer till 10 and didnt go further so i dont spoil the fun.

Full graphics, amazing looks, decently fast combat but remember its still a beta.

Gives me high hopes for live .. feels refreshing to me

[Deleted]

Very much enjoying the questing.

Tried WvWvW...did not like it at all. My experience was running for 10-15 minutes to find any players, dying, running again...It's also not very well explained what's meant to be going on. I teleported to the blue world and had no idea where I was meant to go, no to mention not knowing the difference between the worlds and so on. If people have to visit a wiki to understand the game mode, something may be wrong.

[Ohmnia]

Very much enjoying the questing.

Tried WvWvW...did not like it at all. My experience was running for 10-15 minutes to find any players, dying, running again...It's also not very well explained what's meant to be going on. I teleported to the blue world and had no idea where I was meant to go, no to mention not knowing the difference between the worlds and so on. If people have to visit a wiki to understand the game mode, something may be wrong.

You should've done the pvp tutorials in the heart of mists and that next map you reach by using the asura portal in the heart of mists. They pretty much explain how World vs World vs World PvP works

[Caliph]

Hi all hope you're having fun.

All I know is time went by like it wasn't even there. look up and omg it's already 2:15am. but i started like at 6 or something. wow.

- some bugged or broken quests but it's beta we're here for that.

- The movement is good,
- combat is good
- the world bosses are hard which is good
- the zones are beautiful
- i didn't suffer any lag or fps issues
- crafting is awesome, only did very little of it but the interface, how it's done etc is really cool. have to be a crafting station though
- character creation is awesome, i didn't see anyone who looked like me at all. everybody is just different.
- graphics are quite good, the aesthetic is gorgeous for me at least.
- i got confused on where to go a lot of the times, but that encourages exploring.
- the skill points were confusing at first then i clicked around a bit and found the right way to do it. no reason for me or others imo to whine however.
- it's really well polished, admitedly i didn't suffer the friday high jinks but it was fine for me all day yesterday (saturday).
- i had a lot of fun,there's a ton of quests everywhere, there's a decent story, and i didn't even pvp yet. man this game is going to be fun.
- the gem buying and selling was kinda funny didn't like it at all actually
- the AH is kind of deep. there's a lot you can do with it. looks cool actually.

overall I liked it, lived up to my hype but i'm not overzealous, it's well polished, and very immersive.

---------- Post added 2012-04-29 at 09:48 AM ----------

I get the same feeling. Gabe from Penny Arcade is right, the gameplay/combat isn't as good as TERA's.

Tera lol, you'll run out of stuff to do very fast let's see how far aiming will take you.

[Emperia]

Hi all hope you're having fun.

All I know is time went by like it wasn't even there. look up and omg it's already 2:15am. but i started like at 6 or something. wow.

- some bugged or broken quests but it's beta we're here for that.

- The movement is good,
- combat is good
- the world bosses are hard which is good
- the zones are beautiful
- i didn't suffer any lag or fps issues
- crafting is awesome, only did very little of it but the interface, how it's done etc is really cool. have to be a crafting station though
- character creation is awesome, i didn't see anyone who looked like me at all. everybody is just different.
- graphics are quite good, the aesthetic is gorgeous for me at least.
- i got confused on where to go a lot of the times, but that encourages exploring.
- the skill points were confusing at first then i clicked around a bit and found the right way to do it. no reason for me or others imo to whine however.
- it's really well polished, admitedly i didn't suffer the friday high jinks but it was fine for me all day yesterday (saturday).
- i had a lot of fun,there's a ton of quests everywhere, there's a decent story, and i didn't even pvp yet. man this game is going to be fun.
- the gem buying and selling was kinda funny didn't like it at all actually
- the AH is kind of deep. there's a lot you can do with it. looks cool actually.

overall I liked it, lived up to my hype but i'm not overzealous, it's well polished, and very immersive.

---------- Post added 2012-04-29 at 09:48 AM ----------



Tera lol, you'll run out of stuff to do very fast let's see how far aiming will take you.

I'm sorry to say, but you don't seem like a person who has been in the BWE at all. Not saying the game is bad or good or anything, but your overgeneralization on each of those points without any solid points makes me believe you are full of bs. Tons of quests? What?

[Deleted]

I'm sorry to say, but you don't seem like a person who has been in the BWE at all. Not saying the game is bad or good or anything, but your overgeneralization on each of those points without any solid points makes me believe you are full of bs. Tons of quests? What?

Why not? I fail to see anything wrong with his post. As for the "ton of quests" he meant "ton of things to do" because it's true. I was in complete awe how well designed leveling experience was.

[Deleted]

The beta ia amazing, but i think that lots of ppl with the retail version are gonna miss the indoor raidbosses at some point.Only the pvp ppl that are gonna play this game really a long time, there for i hope that they are gonna put in some indoor raidbosses even if there are no real tanks and healers.
Like dodge and that kinda stuff with the bosses.

[dezzick]

Tried in a friends house for 4hours ish.

It didnt wowed(no pun intended) me, tbh the combat feel abit slugish but I only tried the engenier can be diferent for other classes, saw my friends playing a mesmer felt more fluid thou The events are cool thou but they can be come boring and repetitive later on.

The graphics are nothing out of the ordinary even on my friend's high end machine with all maxed, felt abit flat, The art style not a fan but to be frank it works good and they did a good job in that

The Cash shop with the XP boosts turned me off abit, but was expected they got get money somehow.

Seems a fun game, bit overhyped, my experience was short to give a real impression but was expecting abit more right of the bat

The xp bonuses are for monsters only.. and the enemies only give you 14 xp or so. You barely get any xp from killing mobs.. its all about the quests.

[Fierae]

If they don't sort out their engine, I will be incredibly disappointed. 3930K and GTX 680 and I get 24fps in surround setup...

Tera (which has better graphics and is a year and a half old) is getting 40-80fps.

[terrahero]

If they don't sort out their engine, I will be incredibly disappointed. 3930K and GTX 680 and I get 24fps in surround setup...

Tera (which has better graphics and is a year and a half old) is getting 40-80fps.

One of the things with the last beta was that the CPU took the load and not the GPU. Some debug mode of sorts. It has lead to performance issues across the board, in the final product (and hopefully the next BWE) your GPU should start taking the biggest chunk of the work.

[Chrno]

copy paste from a previous post, wasn't allowed to have my own thread and i missed this one, but again, here it is

Hello everyone. In this little write up I'll let you know what I experienced in the last beta weekend (d.d. 4-4-2012). I'll try to be as honest as possible when it comes to the stuff I write about below. Also I'm Dutch so if you belong to the spelling police please abandon this post. The post is written after playing the Norn race (elementalist) to level 15 in PvE only. So keep that in mind please, thank you.

Launching up
When I first launched the game up I was pretty surprised to see a nice clean login screen. When you're used to screens with flashy scenery's or roaring dragons in your face this was really a pleasant surprise. Job well done arena net.

Character Creation
The character creation was decent. It's not as spectacular as Aion but what it does it does well. You get some sliders to scale some body parts but in the end every character looks good proportion wise. And that's also one of my minor complaints because some races (namely humans) look a little bit too 'perfect' for my taste. But if that's the way they want it I'm cool with that.

What I would like to see is a button that lets you hear the voice of your character when choosing your race. After making my Norn female character I was a little bit let down by her voice.

Logging in to the game
The introduction of the game is great. I started out inside a house and upon walking outside there was an NPC shouting to come over and your own personal story begins. You receive a few tasks and in the end you kill some huge monster. The entire experience was rather overwhelming I must say.
the NPC actually give you tasks of what is to be expected of you but give you minimal information on how to do it and where to complete those tasks. That being said the information can all be found in your UI and your world map. What I personally would've liked was a explanation of all the various icons on your world map and the UI. I think the entire thing would become a little bit less overwhelming to new players (especially to those new to the genre). PS: I do know some hints and pointers show up on your UI while playing I'm just saying this could be improved.

For example teach people how to use dodge, my friend was level 11 before I asked him why I never saw him do any dodges. His answer was that he didn't know how to do it. He never reads websites or any of that, he's simply there to enjoy the game and so he never knew you could.

Hearts and Dynamic events
Dynamic events on the first beta night were, not so great. Because so many like me logged in the starter area's were so crowded the events turned in massive zerg fests and it got me thinking whether I would like this as I had hoped I would. Anyway the server got toasted (just like my PC) and I was knocked off the server after a while so I choose to hit the beds and try again later.
So the next day with the server being all stable I went out again and I must say I had a great time. Yes they are basically the same 'ol quests but they are presented in a way that's very appealing to me.

What did I learn from my first night ? I learned to avoid DE's with 20+ people zerging it. It's just not fun for me. I noticed I was having the most fun when doing DE's with around 5 people naturally grouping up deep inside a cavern helping each other out. And this system works great for that.

Hearths were nice but I really only did them to spend my Karma. They are basically quests like we know them. Some hearts do take quiet long though and are fun for the first few minutes but after a few minutes I often got bored of them.

Meta events
I did 2 meta events this weekend. The first one was 'The frozen Maw' and the 2nd one was 'Assault on Svanir's Dome'. These were the events I looked forward to the most and ended up being a small let down. The start of both chains are fun and exciting. You either collect stuff or you help a few NPC's capture 2 towers and fend off some bad guys. The build-up is really great. Both events started off with around 5 to 10 other random players but got quickly flocked by 30+ players all helping out and while that sounds pretty cool it's actually quite the opposite. What starts off as amazing turns into the MASSIVE zerg fest when the final opponent arrives.

I realize this has to do with the fact that the game isn't even out yet and the servers were extremely crowded but still. It was a bit of a letdown for me.

Overflow Servers !
The most amazing thing ever, unless you're in a party with your girlfriend. What happened like 10/15 times was that I would get on my home server and my girlfriend in the over flow server ... separated. And thus we were often portal hopping until we were on the same server.
Now what happened was that while we were grouped up we NEVER did a personal story because if we did we'd be separated again. And that's again, quiet annoying. But if arena net can create a solution for this (and I'm sure they will) overflow servers are the WAY TO GO for every future MMORPG if you ask me.

Partying
During the entire weekend as I already said I was grouped up with me girlfriend and a few things I noticed during this:
- Thank you for mini map drawing like we were able to do in GW1;
- Can you please show party members on the world map because I don't think it does yet and it can be really helpful since people will be way pointing all over the map;
- Can you please get an option to follow a player like in GW1 for when I'm fetching a coffee (I really missed this )
- My party member showed up as a light blue dot on my mini map. Maybe it's an idea to make this a different color because my own steps are white and therefore during certain big boss fights it was impossible to locate my dead girlfriend in the mess.
- I also liked that people that go offline don't automatically leave the group as they did in GW1. This is much better.

looks and feel of the world
The world looks absolutely amazing to me. It got me wanting to explore everything of the entire map. The map itself is HUGE and it is packed with stuff to do. Combine that with some really good music and you have yourself some good eye candy.
I only played the Norn starter area but I only found 1 very small/tiny invisible wall which is acceptable for me. You hardly have the feeling your playing in a map. You have the feeling your playing in a part of a world. Amazing job on that!

Combat
Combat to me feels like it's easy to start with but really hard to master. It took quite some time before I got used to switching between the 4 different attunements (and I was far from being good at it but at least I was trying right . My guess is that good players will be able to switch weapons/attunements on the fly during combat and the lesser skilled players will be sticking with 1 preferred weapon/attunement. In a result the skilled players will most likely blow the lesser skilled players out of the water. Those players will most likely be able to solo allot of tough content while the lesser skilled players will have to group up to do those tasks.
The combat felt really FPS like to me for some reason. I never thought I would enjoy an action based MMO this much and it actually got me thinking about trying out Tera at some point in the future.

All in all from the little tip of the iceberg I saw, I can only conclude I liked the combat.

Underwater combat
I absolutely loved the underwater combat of my elementalist and it kept me wanting more. That being said, I was making my companion going crazy, she kept begging me not to use the 'water boiling spell' because it was making her unable to see anything at all.
A simply fix would be to allow you camera to zoom out just a little bit more. It would give people a MUCH better view, especially underwater.

Difficulty
This is one of the best one yet. The game felt challenging from the start! I guess this is where the term 'endgame starts at level 1' came from. And I must say I love it.
I died many, many times during the beginning. Some mobs can hit you for about 30/50% of your health if you don't dodge out of the way. This is something that you either love or hate.
Personally I really needed this. That being said I found a few events that were near impossible to complete and that need a bit of scaling but that is to be expected of a beta test.

Conclusion
Arena net has a rough diamond in their hands with this game and with some tweaks here and there this will turn into one good game. My only advice that if your still in doubts and you love MMORPG's is to give this game a shot. What's the worst that can happen?

[Deleted]

What I personally would've liked was a explanation of all the various icons on your world map and the UI. I think the entire thing would become a little bit less overwhelming to new players (especially to those new to the genre). PS: I do know some hints and pointers show up on your UI while playing I'm just saying this could be improved.

For example teach people how to use dodge, my friend was level 11 before I asked him why I never saw him do any dodges. His answer was that he didn't know how to do it. He never reads websites or any of that, he's simply there to enjoy the game and so he never knew you could.

Hey Chrno,

Well this is the sort of thing that is ideal for games developers to do off the back of such Beta testing. Because (simple) tutorials rarely impact upon other game systems, they can be added right at the end - and use feedback from public Beta testers as to exactly what needs focusing on and explaining more.

So I would hope that this is something that can definitely be improved between now and the final release...

(Having said that, I'm always of the opinion that the best ingame tutorials are those that are built right in to the very fibre of the game from the beginning, rather than simple UI pop-ups tacked on at the end. Sorry, just a personal bug-bear! )