Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend

Lion’s Arch

It may take more than one post to truly cover everything I want to cover about my time in the first Beta test (for the players) of Guild Wars 2. There is much I have not done, much I have not explored and the world is new, vast and astoundingly rich in beauty and details.  It took me til the second day to find Lion’s Arch, which had only been released on this Beta, and not on the previous “media only” Betas (which to me was a wash, and only angered a lot of the true fans of Guild Wars, because why let the media experience what we Guild Wars addicts have been waiting years for?, and besides, who best to critique and play the game the way the developers wish it to be played then by us? —But that is a rant best left for another day, or left entirely.)

Nalora in Game

I began the game as a human ranger, since I have played a human ranger in the original Guild Wars for years. I thought comparing old and new to see the changes would be a good place to start, as well as not having so much that was new to confuse me  into tears on the first day. I loved the new customization tools, especially the minute detail customization of facial features, it was very similar to There.com facial customization, via sliders and insures that no one looks exactly like you. I love that we are not forced to take last names anymore, This allows for a couple of my toon names I love to use to finally be created on Guild Wars.

The “personal story” part of the game is an improvement, but I was a bit sad that they did not include a place to include our own personal background story to characters. I like this part of City of Heroes, and would have liked to have seen it implemented in full in Guild Wars. I completed the entire “personal story” segment (which ended at level 20, the rest to be implemented on release, they said) and enjoyed it a lot. It is similar to the main quest line in the original Guild Wars, but with a more personal angle. I am not altogether sure how the choices I made affect me overall in the world yet, nor do I know how in game increases in various attributes gained by merely speaking to NPC will affect my character either.

I loved the clothing. I think I will love it more when I see more of it, but they paid close attention to fine details. You can take tailoring and other various armor crafts as your crafting skills. I will be concentrating more on the crafting area of the game in the next Beta. They have indicated there will be one a month til release, and in all honesty I would like there to be less Beta so the full release comes sooner.

Female Sylvari

Sylvari and Asuran were not open for play during the Beta, nor was the Sylvari area, but there were some walking around town. They are entirely too “Avatar” ish for my taste, and I think they will probably be one of the last  races I will try. I do want to make an Asuran thief, since I have been a halfling rouge in tabletop for greater than 25 years, and would like to recreate it in Guild Wars 2.

Female Centaur

I met this one Female Centaur in a town, and would love to play a centaur if they ever release this as a race in upcoming expansions. She was tall and gorgeous.

Most of the bugs I experienced in Beta were quite minor, and I reported them dutifully. But there was nothing game breaking for me. The game play was smooth on my computer, without any lag except when jackwagons were “testing the server” by trying to crash it. They justified their idiocy by saying this was what they were here for, I must be getting old because I did not even try to point out that server stress tests are usually scheduled by the Developers and not the players, and are scheduled during a time in Betas when there are Engineers on the server side to watch the stress and make adjustments and notes. Most kids who do this sort of  Beavis and Butthead “Oh look we are so cool, we gonna crash the server huhuhuh.” Don’t know much about how work….works, having never held any job outside the wonderful world of fast food.

I did make our Guild in the game, but the Guild Interface is one of the things that is woefully broken. I believe our Guild Designation bug that we have in Guild Wars 1 has carried over to Guild Wars 2, in that someone else has our designation [SOLO]. We had discussed changing our Guild Name and to be honest, I am going to test making one that is The Chihuahua Emporium and Coffeehouse to see if it fits within character limitations, and if it does, then that will be my Guild. I have heard so many suggestions by my guildies of what the new one should be called, and none sound that great to me. I am more into fun than manliness and godliness in my gaming.  But we shall see.

I am having severe Guild Wars 2 withdrawals. Watching a lot of films on Youtube. I came across 4o minutes of Ranger gameplay that shows the interface and the main story line in a way that is untouched and looks like what I saw when I played, bar the gender change.