Guild Wars 2

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Time for Neueziel's mini-review that no one cares about!

I'm playing this game, I like some stuff but I definitely think WoW is a better mmo, at for pve. The sylvari are really cool (looking) and they've really improved the graphics and performance, it looks really good and is a lot more fluid....but CALL ME CRAZY, laugh at me and throw rotten fruit but I swear I think World of Warcraft STILL looks more expressive. I will give credit to Guild Wars 2, it has polish and I love the little details you can give your characters, like the glow in the dark for the sylvari.

Mechanic wise, I like unlocking new skills and skill challenges are cool. I like the platforming aspects too, its fun trying to discover vistas. The lore is kind of ehhhh though, try to understand here, I was TOTALLY into Warcraft 2 and 3. Reign of chaos and The Frozen Throne are still some of my favorite games ever and you bet your ass I was hyped for World of Warcraft. I only played a little bit of GW1, I liked the skill system in that game a lot, made me think of picking a card deck and I felt like there were a lot of options for builds. Instant attribute resets was great too and experimentation was fun, in theory, but its a game I could never get into. I really like the tengu and frogmen, I would have loved to have made one of those and hey maybe we'll get them for an expansion.

I feel like I'm totally alone but I'm...sorta underwhelmed, the game is growing on me a lot and I LOVE the dye system. In theory I like the custom playlists and spent hours ripping and editing music for boss fights and combat only to discover that the custom playlists merely loop in order. So lets say you have the following themes in your boss music playlist: Still More Fighting (FF7), Deep Drive (Kingdom Hearts 2), Darkess Nova (Legend of Mana) and Bishop's Rescue (Aliens soundtrack). Still More Fighting will always play first and before I knew this I made special edits of all my boss themes so they looped for 10 minutes plus. I was HOPING I would get a random theme for each battle encounter or boss but nope! Its really disappointing and I was very so hyped up for my custom playlist, I had Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, Boards of Canada and lots of video game soundtracks, edited and extended by yours truly in preparation but it doesn't matter now because having a 30 song playlist merely means you'll hear the first 4 songs on your list forever. The default music is okay but I think my custom soundtrack beats the socks out of Jeremey Soule's stuff, which I don't really love or hate. It just feels generic.


I've played necro mostly because I spent most of beta as an elementalist and like the spells. I've heard minion mastery was very under powered right now so I'm just sticking to life siphon-y stuff and dots. One problem I have, and again this is probably my fault, is that I simply don't know what I'm doing half the time. I'm low level but all fights consist of me spamming my 1 skill, using deathshroud with full life force, spamming the skill that does damage with your lifeforce, reverting back and throwing in other spells at random. I did a very awesome spell combo with a nearby elementalist where I dropped some kind of well of suffering that causes a circular AOE effect and he used a fire spell that combined, that was REALLY cool and made me think of dual techs from Chrono Trigger. The way deathshroud works reminds me a lot of how demon form works in the mists of pandaria beta, since you generate demonic fury, use your attacks, then revert back at 50% or so and use your regular rotation while generating fury.

So here are my pluses and minuses, so far into the game:

PROs
Beautiful graphics with high level of detail
Very awesome customization for your characters, assuming you're playing a sylvari or charr. Humans are well, humans. The chicks are pretty and the guys look like bishies. I spent most of beta as a human but sylvari is lots of fun.
Exploration is fun
Platforming and discovering vistas is going to be love or hate. I loved it, you may hate it and just want your exploration points.
PVP promises to be balanced, fair and not based around gear like WoW's. I have not tried GW2's pvp yet so I can't comment here but I will believe what people have said. I know GW1 was a very pvp-centric game so I'm not shocked.
In theory the custom playlist editor is the most awesome thing ever. I wish such a hyped feature was implemented more intuitively though.
Combo finishers are awesome
Being able to level down to play with friends is a very cool feature.

CONS

My minus points are more like mini-rants instead of real points, be warned!

Voice acting, with a few exceptions, is REALLY dull. Felicia Day and Christopher Blum are great but every other npc sounds downright painful. Now now, I know Dragonsoul had some of the worst voice acting in WoW ever and was very half-assed, but from my time in the MOP beta they've really pulled their stuff together and brought things back to the standard Blizzard level of quality.

. The char are basically the bestial, war loving savages and sylvari are kinda like night elves mixed with draenei. Replace the naruu with nature and the Emerald Nightmare with whatever the hell the bad sylvari are doing. Maybe there's story potential with this so called Nightmare Court, there was a lot of depth (for a video game) with the night elves in WoW because you had Malfurion,Tyrande and Illidan's relationship built up from the RTS games and then you had the various npcs, like Staghelm, someone players got to become antiquated with for many years (alliance side at least) and he ended up being a raid boss. I like playing a sylvari more than a night elf but they really remind me more of draenei in how innocent and good most of them are. I'm interested to see if anet will do anything with the Nightmare Court or just make them standard low level goons you beat up early on.

The charr are kitty-orcs, lore wise, sorry. Again, I like orcs more, I'm biased. I loved them in WC2 and thought WC3 gave them amazing depth and transformed my outlook on the horde. The (good) orcs seek redemption and a way to free themselves from the shackles of the old ways (Warcraft 2 orcs and the dudes you fight in Blackrock Mountain and Outland). All I remember about char from my limited playthrough of GW1 is that they were an antagonistic monster race that brought about a nuclear winter on Ascalon in GW1. Apparently, in the lore, there is also a schism between the -good- char and the -bad- char, the latter of which are evil magic users and the charr look down on magic apparently. I don't hate the charr, I think they're kind of cute honestly. Still, I couldn't muster much desire to play one, I say WoW orcs are cooler. You've got Thrall, Gul'dan, Nerzhul, Grom, Saurfang, Garrosh etc. 90% of these guys were relevant when Vanilla launched.

I think the asura are cooler than gnomes, I really love the architecture of their city and would have played one for my character on live if I hadn't fallen in love with the sylvari. What can I say, I love flowers

Dare I say night elves and draenei have a lot more personality, despite being standard races but they also have the benefit of lore from TWO RTS games and multiple quests and expansions (well..just Burning Crusade for the draenei).


All of this is kind of a minus point because I feel like the races are a tad uninspired, mostly. Yes, I know WoW basically had elves,trolls,orcs,undead,human,minotaurs etc but I instantly found them more likeable. A friend said it best to me, he feels very disconnected from the world and questing, none of the major npcs are very likeable. I know its heresy for me to say that bi-pedal horned goat lions are less original than orcs but I'm just talking from a Warcraft perspective here and I'm SURE people will disagree with me. I am very biased clearly, Nothing lore wise grabs me about the Guild Wars 2 races, even the ones I like. This may not matter to 90% of players who hate the grindy nature of WoW but I'm a huge geek here.

I'll try to stop talking about WoW and I'll give this game the benefit of the doubt in some aspects since it has expansions to fill in various potholes. Do I think this game is going to surpass WoW at what it does...ever? No, I do not. WoW may be an 8 year old game but I believe its still going to be the foremost experience for people who mainly care about pve.

I'll play this game and enjoy it. Its really not terrible at all and I admire the new things it does and I really like how accessible it feels. The first couple of betas really underwhelmed me but I can see clear improvements. Group quests are fun...HOWEVER....a big issue is that you can simply wander around, walk into an area where people are working on a quest, be lazy and VIOLA you got exp! Some people will love this, in some ways I do too, but ironically this feature gives me no real desire to group with or help others. Sometimes I will, if its a simple quest, but the crap where you have to pick up tools and get a new set of skills to use really suck (in my opinion). I hate having my regular spells taken away while I carry a shovel that can bash monsters . I had the same grievances with WoW's vehicle quests too. I just don't like gimmicky s**t like that, its why I hated phase 3 Malygos, and Occulus in WoW. At least this game doesn't shove all of that down your throat and force you to do it.

If you're an oldschool MMOer you may (rightfully so) have a lot of issues with the questing system too. I was a fan of the "Christmas Tree" style hubs in Burning Crusade and WOTLK, but you have to realize something: this game really isn't like an mmorpg at all. Its a fun game but so far it feels more like an exploration based one with other players running around you. If you're looking for the next evolution of WoW do NOT buy this game, buy Mists of Pandaria. If you want to play a pretty fun game with online and no monthly fee then try it out I'd say. Everyone in beta brought the game anyway so this is all a moot point.

So all in all Guild Wars 2 is a fun game, I like it. Its not going to scratch that itches that WoW does though but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I DO think this game was mega hyped and there is going to be a big backlash because its really not going to live up to what people were expecting: a WoW killer that brings the same immersion, story, pve with actual pvp balance, in spades. Sorry folks but GW2 is simply a fun game that will probably have better balance in PVP than WoW (like that will be hard).

I would love to play it more but it still lags a bit.. runing at a max of 20 FPS ugh!

I had this problem throughout the betas running on lowest settings but now I can run on the game on high and stay in the 40s. I guess they're not done optimizing.

I did a test with the music editor, the "ambient" playlist will randomly loop but the battle themes will not nor will the menu theme. I spent several hours making several awesome battle themes, one being a 10 minute edit of this theme:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYy68wQN0hg[/youtube]

I edited it so the song starts around the 1:40sh mark up to minute 3 or so then its edited and merged into the same song so it loops for 10 minutes like how it would in a real video game. I did this for some other themes but the lack of a random selection option for the battle tracks puts a damper on this. I liked the idea of randomly going into battle with this playing or the Persona 3 battle theme. I really hope its just some bug because I was very excited about making a big playlist of situational battles and already done some work.

My ambient/overworld music mostly consists of the works of Brian Eno mixed in with songs from Aphex Twin's Assorted Ambient works.

This is my login/character creation theme:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCpk7HIryK0[/youtube]


I know a lot of people LOVE Jeremy Soule, but given the choice I'd much rather substitute my own soundtrack in.

I get 40 - 60 FPS with my computer...

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz
8 GB memory
AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB (WHQL certified 8.982.0.0 Final Retail, 7/27/2012)
1920 x 1080 DVI screen display
1TB Western Digital 7200RPM HDD
15 ms ping / 15 Mbps (1.5 MBps) download / 50 Mbps (5 MBps) upload

My game settings

I'm only level 10 but I'M REALLY loving the exploration, I'm having fun just searching for every vista and point of interest. One of the vista's in the sylvari zone was pretty tough, pretty well hidden. I'm getting way too much fun out of the custom playlist, I keep adding new songs and revising stuff. Its a great, great way to customize your experience if you don't care for Jeremy Soule, I don't hate him but its too hillarious having the 1969 Batman theme looped for 10 minutes play when spiders jump you. I have a ton of custom music consisting of ambient songs and edited video game music where I've cut the fadeout out and extended the playtime so it feels more natural.

I'm starting to "get" necromancer too, but I'm still not very high. I love having my exploding kamikaze bone minions though!


Also the collector's edition is frickin HUGE, its easily three times the size of a Blizz CE. I really like the tin my game came in and I'm happy Rhylock was packaged inside the box so I can actually unbox him if I want. I assumed I would get a tin for the game itself and a seperate box I would keep unopened for the figure. Its a pretty awesome fig, pretty big and comes with a stand.

How are you guys playing? Beta?

The game went live today. All of us who pre-purchased have been playing since early Saturday. You can go pick it up in stores now.

You got the same CPU (I got a 2120 however, it's only a 200 MHz difference), as well as the same GPU as I do. I can do this game at about 50-60 fps at 1920 x 1080 almost maxed out, but with shaders and shadows set to medium, reflections set to off, and antialiasing set to native. I can't believe my dual cores letting me play this, I heard those with a quad were screwed. Guess that was overexaggerated maybe?

I'm also envying that upload speed.

I'm enjoying this game a lot more, its pretty damn fun. Its very rewarding exploring, finding vistas and getting skill challenges. I REALLY dislike underwater combat though and my necro pets are more ret*d than my warlock pets on WoW. I mainly use the default one as a free HP battery and I do love my two kamikaze bone minions. I think I'm going to go with a dagger or staff build, focusing on stealing life or whatever..I just hit 12. I'm actually kind of wondering how people are leveling fast, my one friend said he stuck with the starter zone still about 14. I feel like all the hearts I haven't done out level me, like one with you going underwater to help fishmen with the not-Naga who are HUGE as*holes. I hate fighting them because they always flank me, use that aoe poison thing and swim away. Some enemies act really..weird too AI wise. This giant prehistoric sea insect started aggroing me, I fought it, got it about halfway and then it just started to swim away and regained all its hp.

Spent an obscene amount of time perfecting my ingame music. I'll post my list in an edit.

I'm conflicted with this game, I'm enjoying it a lot more than I expected and I'm going to miss some of the features when I go play WoW again (yeah) but there's still quite a few polish issues, not just launch time bugs that all big mmo's have. Some aspects are just really clunky and I wish they didn't exist, but its nothing horrible or enough to bring down the game. Its nicely challenging (so far) and I'm dying quite a lot to enemies..especially the not-Nagas because I hate fighting underwater. I think WoW handled it A LOT better with Vashjir, you kept your abilities but could still navigate in multiple dimensions and it never felt really confusing. On the other hand it really feels like diving better into this huge lake with its own ecology, but again, hate me but I think WoW BC era was just as immersive, if not more. Part of why I like the sylvari zone so much is that it even reminds me of Zangarmarsh.

Its a great game overall. I think part of my enjoyment is supplemented by the fact I have a 9 minute loop of the Adam West Batman theme to play anytime a monster attacks me.


edit- Here are some of my custom ingame playlists. Basically you go to the Guild Wars 2 music folder and make playlists called Ambient,Underwater,BossTheme,Battle etc, save them in the folder and viola new music! If you place an mp3 of silence at the start of each list your songs will always be random.

My daytime music that plays out of battle and cities:


Here are my various battle themes (so far). A lot of them are specific edits I made of songs whee I removed fadeouts or took out certain sections and extended the length to give the battle themes a more seamless feel. These start playing during bigger monster fights and events:

"Alienbattlemusic" is a custom edit I made of the combat drop music from Aliens, taking out certain parts and making the track into devoted battle music. "Gruntepic" is merely portions of Grunt's theme from Mass Effect I edited and looped, they play during his recruitment and loyalty missions if you played ME2. "Fuse" is the same theme from Xenogears, only edited, looped etc for battle music. "Hardcorebattle" is a heavily edited version of this boss theme from Shadow Hearts Covenant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irGCdR0rTM4. I removed the initial buildup so when a fight or event starts the heavy percussion immediately kick in and I of course removed fade out and last portion of the song. Makes very good battle music actually. This seems to play the most out of my battle themes too..for some reason. And yes I did a custom edit of the Champloo theme because its awesome.

Here are my boss themes so far. Some are heavily edited. The big 30 minute untitled one is a looping edit of the suicide theme music from Mass effect 2. Sadly haven't fought any bosses yet.

When you play on land your field of view is generally two-dimensional in terms of width and length, however under water a third dimension is added (height). This means targets can attack from above and below. Our normal instinct when attacked is to swivel 360 degrees until we find the target within our relative FOV, but in a three-dimensional environment it takes longer to locate the mob. I think this is the reason why people dislike the underwater aspect of WOW and GW2. It's less a game play mechanic and more a problem with skill, that is to say how the player handles themselves in three-dimensional environments.

This is true. It mainly bothers me because I'm a wells necromancer and can't use those underwater, it just feels kinda weird. I'm already level 35 and loving the heck out of the game though. I absolutely love the combat, it reminds me a little bit of Demon Souls later on with all the rolling and use of positioning and using your skills smartly. I'm really surprised so many people have lambasted the combat, I'm enjoying this game 100X more than I did in beta. I also like how the game is less gear based so if you find yourself dying a lot, like I did earlier on, its more "gee what am I doing wrong" than "oh god my spec and gear are crappy". Gear does matter in that you want to focus on stuff with certain stats, but I'm happy all the heavy grindy stuff is purely cosmetic. I played WoW last night and just felt at a disadvantage anymore because I was waay behind with gear (item level 382) and my pvp gear is outdated so I couldn't properly gauge how I was doing.

I've had a lot of fun experimenting with skill combos and right now use a staff for aoe/events and axe/focus for everything else. Its really fun.

For those of you experiencing a drop in FPS I can recommend a possible fix if you're running windows 7:

- Hold the windows key(Mine is in between CTRL and ALT) and press R
- The run window should pop up
- Type in msconfig
- Press OK

- When the system configuration window shows up click the Services tab
- Look through the list for Windows Event Log and uncheck/disable it
- Look through the list again for Windows Event Collector and uncheck/disable it

You'll probably have to restart your computer after, But see if you get better FPS! If not you could also try other things such as:

- Updating your graphics driver to a newer version
- Defragmenting your hard drive
- (If Windows 7/Vista) Right click your Guild Wars 2 shortcut, Click compatablity, disable desktop composition (will make your desktop less pretty while running the game and giving you more resources to dedicate to your game).
- Game Booster!
- Closing out of as many unneeded programs as possible before gameplay
- Buying better computer hardware (Graphics Card/RAM)

I probably need to buy new hardware, but would rather spend $3000 on something else.

Games great, I still havent left the newbie area lol. Underwater is nice to have something different, and the graphics are clean. I just wish you could autoface your targets, this is what made GW 1 great I thought. Constantly having to move your camera around gets you dizzy.

I've been playing this too, still trying to decide on guardian or ranger.

Just finished my first dungeon, CM, it was kinda fun..but a bit bland. So far the questing and doing events is more enjoyable pve than the dungeons, which is a bit disappointing because I love doing dungeons normally. I've also noticed that the cost of all waypoints scales with your level and they become prohibitively expensive, which sucks.

Still a good game, even if the dungeon I did was boring. I was just surprised because the dynamic events have all been so cool so far, I was expecting the dungeons to up the scale, be more epic etc. I guess this is more a pvp game. I'll see how it gets later on.

If you pay 3k for a new computer I think you're doing something wrong.

My current system is:
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-2100 CPU @ 3.10GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.1GHz
8 GB memory
AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB (WHQL certified 8.982.0.0 Final Retail, 7/27/2012)
1920 x 1080 DVI screen display
1TB Western Digital 7200RPM HDD

I got everything above for $850; tax and shipping included. GW2 runs at around 50 FPS with everything maxed out; save the shadows (have those set to low).