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[Column] Guild Wars 2: Guild Wars 2 Launch Edition
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The day has finally come when the gaming world gets to get into Guild Wars 2 to see if it can and will live up to the promise it seems to embody. We've been hanging out during the head start and have The List today that details some of what we've seen, both good and bad. See what you think!
I don’t know if you guys have heard, but a little game called Guild Wars 2 is official “Launching” as of today, August 28th. I’ve spend what seems like forever in the game over the past few days, and as the lucky dog who gets to review the game here on MMORPG.com and have you all tear me a new one when you don’t agree with me (I’m kidding, sort of) I thought we’d celebrate the launch with a look at three fantastic things I’m loving in the new Tyria, and three things I’m less than thrilled with. Then later this week, we’ll officially start our “Review in Progress” series leading up to the official review later in September. So, let’s dive in (if you’re actually on the site and not playing). Mind you, some of my “negatives” could very well be fixed by the time you read this. But them’s the breaks!
Read more of Bill Murphy's The List: Guild Wars 2 Launch Edition.
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Comments
The other really fantastic bit is how they dealt with the login issues and dc issues on the first day.
Whilst some people like to see 3-4 hours of down time on day 1 an issue. I would say that a company who realise there is a connectivity issue, take down the login servers and identify the problem within 4 hours and apply an appropriate fix that quickly to be displaying just the kind of inniative that will build this into a very successful game.
Fantastic bits 1. Map clearing
Unless your Norn and bugged as 1000s are and Vendrakes heart is not spawning/showing.
Bad points 2. I have to agree on its a bit of a pain and I'm not even sure they can be done using transmutation as I couldnt do it last night with my krytan piece when I got a new mask. I'm hoping that again is a bug as I'll be pretty pissed off if its asking 500 everytime.
I find myself agreeing with every single point you raised Bill, even the negative ones. Luckily though 2 of the 3 bad things will be fixed soon (hopefully) and the armor skin system can always be changed if enough people raise the issue.
I've not done any PVP yet either as the PVE content is so well done I've not felt the urge to yet, the "got to get them all" mentality on maps has firmly grasped me too and I'm not an achievement person really either so they certainly did something right here, definitely great game design in my opinion.
I'm going to try out the crafting today but my friends already tell me it’s very well done also so I'm looking forward to it which again is a shock as I’m no crafter
And, holly cow that fire elemental, must have died 15+ times on it lol
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Bill, they had two updates lastnight around midnight eat that seemed to resolved a bunch of guild issues (bank, represent, join, etc). The first seemingly messed up WvW but that was corrected in the second. Still no AH though from what I see.
Edit: with no down time. You logged out, updated, and we're back in with both.
Ooo so we have an emblem now?!
I've been making sure the queue is full of upgrades, we should be able to put said emblem on armor soon.
We never had a problem with invites or emblems so it was probably a minor bug they either fixed or are close to fixing.
On your point about skinning why does it make sense that your rip the appearance off of something and put on something else that you get to do it again onto another armor. If you allow for that you devalue the skinning process way way to much. Plus gems can easily be bought for ingame currency so its not like you have to spend real money to get the look you want. I doubt they'll do anything about this they have already gone farther than most games to make it easy for people.
Yeah i was exceedingly pleased with the fact that they updated the game with less than a minute of down time. Never seen that done so well.
Monday evening was a little frustrating with dc's and I seem to finally have found a spot to farm weak blood (didnt get a drop until I was lvl 14)
It's a very enjoyable game, one that is really gonna piss my wife off lol
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
THE BAD BITS SO FAR
2.) Armor Skins – One Time Use (or Vanity Items I want in the Cash Shop)
My problem with Vanity Items has been that they target “Social” gamers rather than “Killer” gamers. Now I read that you are going to go down the list and pick the items you want and demand their removal from the cash shop or that their cost be “Fixed.”
Come ON! The editorial staff and community have touted the virtues of F2P, and now here it is, in you face. And you can’t live with it? Oh you gonna put off transmuting for a couple of levels. Time to raise the RMT prices.
You want to know the FIRST thing to be fixed? The number of free gems given out. The first hit is free, but you gotta pay for more. Welcome to Guildcrack.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
So... I'm just going on a hunch here... But...
You didn't bother to read that point of the article did you? Just saw the "Armor skins" bulletin, stumbled brainlessly into the forums and typed up a bunch of gibberish about what you thought he was saying? Am I right?
Because all he said was that he wished that the Krytan/Primeval/Profane vanity sets worked more like the HoM items in a way. In case you don't know how they work, you can warp freely into your personal instance of the HoM, "buy" any of the item skins or pets you want for 0 copper, then freely apply them to an appropriate piece of armor. He just wanted to see an item that worked just like that, sans having to repurchase it, even if it meant paying a little more than the price it is at.
I really do love the way they can quickly patch in hotfixes to the game.
Earlier this morning I wanted to play a bit before I headed out. I got the patch that fixed the guild issues. After a couple minutes of play, I get the message saying that they will restart my client with a new update in 4mins. Just 4mins of play and a quick restart later and I'm back in the game.
Seriously... why don't other devs do this?! (>_<)
CHeers I'll see if I can find which I am missing although having covered every inch of ground there I'm really unsure as to where it can be.
Bad
1 - 5 character slots with 8 classes - I want to play them all. I will be purchasing the other 3 slots so it is not as if I could never have all 8 classes.
Good
1 - Where do I begin?
I had lost faith in MMOs. I thought SWTOR would be the revival of a fun MMO but was falling asleep as I was being hand-held to the next quest. There was no exploring. I longed for the days of exploring such as in SWG or WoW. GW2 has brought it back.
so let me start the list over
1 - Open World exploration. I have even taken my human warrior and started playing in the Norn area.
2 - Scaling. I am lvl 16 on my warrior but I can easily play in the lvl 3 - 6 area in Norn. I am going to go to all the race starting areas. I will be outleveling everything because of this but I dont care ... there is scaling.
3 - Everything else!
Too many things to mention. Dynamic events, WvW, NO QUEST LOG! YAY! The personal story is quite fun. So much more to say but I will stop here.
GW2 has brought back the FUN in MMOs. Haven't had this much fun since Age of Conan.
"I don't give a sh*t what other people say. I play what I like and I'll pay to do it too!" - SerialMMOist
This is my #1 complaint as well.
WvW is the primary thing I bought the game for, and I get wait times from 15 minutes (if I'm lucky), to an hour or so.
Then, if I happen to follow my story line quest, and go into an instance for it, the whole queue for WvW gets reset. So I'm basically stuck with not zoning into anything or I get kicked out of the WvW queue.
As a side note referring to the article, I loved the Fire Elemental in Metrica province. Although all the DE's were pretty nice, that was the most challenging in the zone where people had to really come to help rez and work as a team.
The ANET team has always done this. Its how their server arcitecture works and the fact they remotely apply patches themselves instead of paying people to do it. GW1 had an issue were an item was giving people 40% longer enchants, they patched that within a day of it being exploited, which broke something else which was patched in 20mins.
The issue with WvW is that it has too hard of a numbers limit, which I'm sure is done for balance, simplicity, and, most importantly, for server limit issues. If I was ANET I would keep the hard limit, but increase server capacity for WvW. Once the initial limit is reached, allow for a secondary copy of WvW to exist while adding a "out numbered" bonus or introduce a soft cap ontop of a hard cap to were the number of people from 1 server cannot be over 1.5x the number of people from any other server or something like that.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Stop misleading people with your 500 gem and $20.
$20 is not equal to 500 gems
Should be this: Spend 500 gems on this item (I spend $20 in the weekend which equals to 1600 gems)
I think people unanimously find map completion to be incredibly fun and rewarding. I haven't heard one comment to the contrary. This has so many perks:
The Pacing
Even within this one PvE gameplay mode--the leveling quest--you never find yourself playing in only one activity for any extended period of time. You never just do public events; you never just do heart quests; you never just explore for the sake of exploring; you never just do jumping puzzles (both vistas and official puzzles.) You set out to explore the zone and discover what awaits you, and you naturally and fluidly encounter all of this stuff. In the absence of a singular repetitive activity, there is no grind. You don't get bored. You just don't.
Sense of Progression
One major concern some players had going into GW2 was the lack of progression, or incentive to participate in particular game modes. Thus far, I find myself boggled by how many goals I have to work toward at any given time. And the variety of map completion requirements is a big part of this.
It Feels so Rewarding
The anticipation mounts when you realize you're at about 88% map completion. It's impossible to log off at that point. And your persistence always proves worthwhile when you open that chest, reap the useful rewards and watch that exp bar climb with those satisfying visual and audio effects.
Homitu is spot on. Map completion is my favorite feature. It satisfies the explorer in me as well as the completionist.
On pvp. I, like Bill, have yet to get into WvW since headstart. Personally, I'm saving it for level 80 and end-game. I do spvp to get my fix which is still fun. But with all this predominant talk about GW2 pvp over the years it has really over shadowed the pve aspect of GW2. Which, imo, is where GW2 really shines. I've been saying this since BWE1.
"Just one thing, ArenaNet… please tone down the Fire Elemental in Metrica Province. Thirty people getting wiped in less than thirty seconds seems off balance a bit."
I think this is intended. Get 30 lvl 80s with quality gear, knowledge of their class, and lvl adjusted to +1 (would be 17 iirc) then the event becomes much more managable. Open world endgame raid bosses if you will.