Guild Wars 2: BWE#2

It didn't seem like three days, it seemed like a few hours packed between necessary sustenance breaks, and sleep, but that didn't seem so important at the time.

(This is the important stuff)

I played a number of classes which I hadn't tried, including the Thief, Mesmer, and the Necromancer. I was impressed with the Thief's impressive ability to avoid damage, with shadowsteps (glorified teleports) and crowd control, while dishing out plenty of his own. I didn't get far with the Mesmer, but the weapon skills felt unique compared to other classes. I was a little bit disappointed by the illusions mechanic though, and the random-condition element of the staff didn't impress me all that much. Most of my time was spent with my brother, in the Charr starting zone. He played Mesmer, and I played the Necromancer. Though the Necromancer is less visceral than the Warrior, their capability is incredible. With their life-steals, pet summoning and damage absorption, they have all of the tools to dominate large groups of opponents.

The crafting and economy is well thought out and executed. If there're no sellers for the item(s) you wish to purchase, you can place an order to be fulfilled by other gatherers on the server. This creates a clear demand to be fulfilled at a moment's notice. Not only does this mean that you always end up getting what you want to buy, but the sellers can get their money instantly. Win-Win. It's not only how the trading post is operated, but also how its income scales with the rest of the game. The trading post, with its enthusiastic craftsmen and gatherers, is by far the best way of making money in the game. This is how it should be. For the longest time, MMO cash-acquisition was best achieved through hours of grinding the same thing for daily quests and doing the same dungeon over and over. Hopefully, this income-balancing will remain constant. I'd hate for the end-game to become another grind session.

(ArenaNet's notion of sheep and mine differ greatly.)

As expected, the WvWvW content continued to impress. However, this time I opted to switch my build to be a support Warrior. Using a sword, a warhorn and a shield, I'd speed up my team whilst soaking up damage and chasing down fleeing targets. I chose to have Endure Pain (a brief invulnerability), Banner of Tactics (a heal-increasing flag), and Banner of Defence (which increases toughness and vitality). My elite skill was yet another banner, which revived all targets in an area. While holding a banner, I had a different set of weapon skills. A meagre attack, a sprint, a team speed buff and a skill to plant the flag in a new position. I would switch between the warhorn and the banner to give my team mates a massive speed advantage, but usually just seeing a huge Norn charging with a flag was enough to send enemies running, wishing they had brought more troops. Arenanet introduced skill-points and jumping puzzles to the WvWvW map this beta. I'm curious to see how this turns out. The skill points are ok, and seem to be placed in locations that are tactically useful (think of them as a carrot on a stick), but having a jumping puzzle occupy players that would otherwise have been intercepting dolyaks or taking keeps seems a bit counter-intuitive. Still, it's good to see some extra variety added to the map which will likely be the focus of the endgame besides structured PvP.

A few hours before the Beta ended, my friend and I managed to piece together a group for the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon. The dungeon was a real challenge, and was a nice change from the fifteen-minute 'Heroic' runs in World of Warcraft's expansions. A system is in place that allows you, as the party leader, to call out a target to your party. <Ctrl-T> paints a target with a cross hair, and when the party members hit <T> the target is selected. Sure, there's merit in group members being able to pick their own targets, but it allows for a less bothersome focussing system that makes communication simpler. To our amazement, we managed to down the dungeon's hardest encounter, the famed 'Lovers' boss, first try. The success rate for the dungeon was around 30%, as we later found out from statistics. This does mean that the dungeon content will be challenging for a large proportion of the player base, but that's no bad thing. Still, the players that want to keep the challenge after the story mode can enter the explorable version, so it doesn't matter as much if they continue to reduce the difficulty of the initial run.

There have also been some U.I improvements made to the endurance bar (Dodge-rolling stamina stuff) and the feedback on skill combos. Previously, you would be notified when you made a combo, but you didn't necessarily know what it was. Now, a heart icon pops up and tells you the exact condition you inflicted as a result of this combo. This makes it much more convenient to test out combos and get some synergy with your party.

Guild Wars 2 is continuing to shape up nicely, bring on BWE#3.