Someone may have a better answer than me trying to read through FAQs and what not. I never really played the first GW outside of just playing around, how is content and stuff released? Is it in a huge purchasable expansion, or do they have a smaller content updates periodically? I'm not worried about running out of content or anything, the game has more than you could hope to do than any other mmo or game of this structure.
EDIT: Apologies, i put this in the wrong thread, meant to post in general.
Decent sized periodic updates between expansions is the gw1 model.
I guess I'll throw in my thoughts of the game so far. After all the hype that people have been giving the game I wasn't really sure what to expect. I think I was assuming the game to be so drastically different from anything I've ever played before; a better in every aspect kind of way. While the game didn't really fulfill that hype generated idea I still found a lot of great stuff there. I think some of the best things about the game were things that would have bothered me from other MMO's but I didn't even think about while playing this game. The questing system was pretty great and having other random players able to help was cool too. I really enjoyed the sense of exploration the game promotes and stumbling upon a giant monster to fight was definitely a lot of fun.
I do have a couple of complaints aside from a few bugs I encountered. I'm sure enough people griped about this that they are trying to fix it asap but not being able to play with my friends in the overflow channel was really frustrating. I also feel like some balancing needs to happen with the combat. I leveled a thief and a warrior both to about 12 making sure to unlock all of their weapons and skills. There were a couple times I found myself approaching things solo and I found that soloing on thief pretty much always turned into a gun/offhand kite fest which I didn't really care for. Monsters tended to hit me for rather substantial chunks of my hp and the dodge recharges so slowly I couldn't really last for very long close up to enemies. I understand that each weapon set is situational but I didn't really want to play thief as a ranger. Maybe they could increase the energy regen rate or adjust the strength of the monsters to help with that. Than on the other hand there's warrior which seemed almost too powerful. Using a Great sword I could pretty much single handedly wipe out a wave of 3-4 mobs via the skill point ability invincible > hundred blades > full adrenaline > adrenaline move.
Aside from those couple things I didn't really have any other complaints and even those weren't enough to deter me from playing and having a great time. I don't think there was any point over the weekend that I sat around being bored or not having something to do in game which is something I can't usually say.
The Devs addressed both of those in their Q&A last night. Said they're not happy with the overflow system and might completely rework it, and that they bumped up mob scaling this beta a bit too much.I do have a couple of complaints aside from a few bugs I encountered. I'm sure enough people griped about this that they are trying to fix it asap but not being able to play with my friends in the overflow channel was really frustrating. I also feel like some balancing needs to happen with the combat. I leveled a thief and a warrior both to about 12 making sure to unlock all of their weapons and skills. There were a couple times I found myself approaching things solo and I found that soloing on thief pretty much always turned into a gun/offhand kite fest which I didn't really care for. Monsters tended to hit me for rather substantial chunks of my hp and the dodge recharges so slowly I couldn't really last for very long close up to enemies. I understand that each weapon set is situational but I didn't really want to play thief as a ranger. Maybe they could increase the energy regen rate or adjust the strength of the monsters to help with that. Than on the other hand there's warrior which seemed almost too powerful. Using a Great sword I could pretty much single handedly wipe out a wave of 3-4 mobs via the skill point ability invincible > hundred blades > full adrenaline > adrenaline move.
Where can you read the Q&A?
Thoughts after playing are pretty much just happy that I bought it.
My favorite starting experience (level 1~15ish) in any MMO that I've played thus far. I don't feel like writing a wall of text, so I'm not going to go through all the things I enjoyed, but so far I'm quite happy with the game. There are definitely areas it could be improved, and hopefully it will be, but it still offered an overall superior experience. Considering that, and that I won't have to worry about having to pay a sub to keep playing it post-release, I'm very much looking forward to it going live.
I should preface this by saying that I've been playing GW for over 6 years and having been following GW2 closely from the start.
That said, I was completely blown away... nothing could have prepared me for actually playing the game. I spent almost the entire weekend on my ele (got up to level 30 but sadly no time or group for catacombs). Scepter/Dagger was amazingly fun just flying around with Ride the Lightning, popping all my instant casts (had arcane blast/arcane wave set for extra spike) then using Updraft to gtfo and knock the enemy back... not to mention attunement swapping. It's kinda crazy to just try and swap attunements as quickly as possible, using as many skills as possible.
Also, I really wish I had taken screenshots (derp) because I was just completely blown away by the beauty of the game and particularly the little village in the southeast corner of Kessex Hills (Isgarren's View I think). I literally was in awe and just stopped and ran around for 10 minutes looking at it, then called my guildmates over to see it because it was so beautiful.
You got to level 30? Da fuck.
I played my thief for about 30 hours and got to level 30. Probably the most fun straight 30 hours I've had in a video game in a long time.
Yeah, couple of guys in my guild got to 30 as well. Most of us just tried out different classes in sPvP though. I thought I was pretty set on Warrior going in, but now after playing a few different classes I have no idea what I want to play as.
Honestly, just the time in this beta was enough to justify my $60. I buy games on PS3 that last 5-10 hours new and this weekend alone I put in 20+ hours on GW2 without even scratching the surface. Arenanet has my heart for making everything with such passion for precision and detail. So rare to find a game developer that doesn't just want money and instead wants to make a game that exceeds expectations. My hat (I don't wear one, but for the sake of the saying) is off to them. Can it be BWE2, now?
Clearing Human/Norn areas (1-25) 100% w/o doing a ton of DEs got me to around ~27. Clearing the Charr areas 100% I suppose I would have ended at 34ish. Was ~30.5 with Charr 15-25 about ~55% cleared when beta ended. I'm curious how much clearing a city will net kinda want to do that on release to start and see where I end up. Also, from previous beta the catacombs actually nets quite a bit of exp. It's really a non-issue as far as I see it. Barely even notice the levels going by aside from the obvious milestones and unlocks.
I got very little exp from my catacombs run. Maybe 1/4 of a level? But you aren't running those things for exp anyways! I got an entire level just from getting all the points of interest and waypoints in Divinity's Reach. Granted, this was at like... level 4-5.
One very surprising thing I realized (and probably am not the only one by far) was that the items you get while creating your character are not soulbound -- I had my necromancer's spirit masque on an elementalist, and had a thief running around with eagle-eye goggles. I didn't fully test the robustness of it, but I believe these accessories are still armor-type bound -- you couldn't wear a spanghelm on a mesmer, for instance, or an all-purpose utility pack on a guardian. I think. Next beta!
Was this weekend an open beta for everyone, or was it just for pre-orders? Also, when is the game released?
Was for pre-purchase. No release date yet.
Open beta for pre-purchase seems a bit... stupid?
Kinda glad I haven't pre-purchased yet. It looks cool, but a lot of MMO's have looked cool and a whole lot of people have said new MMO's are awesome before they are released. Anyone that has pre-purchased kind of already has a biased opinion.