Guild Wars 2 (official review on pp 21)

[rittchard]

LOL, yeah I was trying to figure out if I was reading that right - THUNDER BOTTOM MALE?     

If you didn't tell me differently, I'd swear that was a gay porn site I'd been to.   

Maybe I'll make a different guild as a companion:  LIGHTNING TOP MALE!! 

On a side note, who do you think is the "thunder bottom" when Hark and Kato get together?   

[Scraper]

Fuck man I never once drew that connection, but now that it's there it's hard to ignore. We mostly go by Hota so I guess that doesn't sound like a gay porn site. Plus Thunderbottom Ale sounds like a tasty beverage.

[Harkonis]

Now you just need Queen to sing a song about you and we can eliminate gender bias.

[skystride]

LOL, yeah I was trying to figure out if I was reading that right - THUNDER BOTTOM MALE?     

If you didn't tell me differently, I'd swear that was a gay porn site I'd been to.   

Maybe I'll make a different guild as a companion:  LIGHTNING TOP MALE!! 

On a side note, who do you think is the "thunder bottom" when Hark and Kato get together?   

This puts a whole new meaning on the phrase "lightning comes before thunder".

[Lockdown]

 

ritt freakin' cracks me up.   

[Knightshade Dragon]

Yep...it's time for some Guild Wars in just 1 day, 4 hours.  Not like I'm counting.   This is, by far, one of the best CE's I've ever seen!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151005304301249.418559.110273731248&type=1

(for those who hate the Facebook link - here's some imgur - http://imgur.com/a/FaMC3)

[Harkonis]

I don't hate Facebook, but I certainly hate that you already have a CE 

[Arclight]

Is it just me or is there less buzz around here for GW2 than usual for a AAA MMO release?

Which in a bass-akwards way might mean we've got a keeper here.

[Soulchilde]

FYI servers are supposed to be up officially at 12 am pst, but a few ArenaNet Devs on twitter are tweeting to start checking around 12 am est...

[Harkonis]

plenty of buzz on OO, QT3, Broken Forums and the Wanderers.  I think GT has just been a bit slow on activity lately.  (there is also next to zero talk about Transformers, which is pretty amazing both SP and MP)

[Knightshade Dragon]

plenty of buzz on OO, QT3, Broken Forums and the Wanderers.  I think GT has just been a bit slow on activity lately.  (there is also next to zero talk about Transformers, which is pretty amazing both SP and MP)

Buncha damned lurkers.  Activity level is the same (logins, traffic, etc.), but only a few are making / responding to threads.   I'd have to agree that both titles are awesome though.  It's certainly one of the best looking CEs I've ever seen.  Hoping the game can be stable on launch!

[Razgon]

Got convinced at the last moment to prepurchase the game myself - looks fun!

[naednek]

Created a names list here.

 http://gamingtrend.com/forums/massive-multiplayer-madness/guild-wars-2-names-list/

[Arkon]

plenty of buzz on OO, QT3, Broken Forums and the Wanderers.  I think GT has just been a bit slow on activity lately.  (there is also next to zero talk about Transformers, which is pretty amazing both SP and MP)

Buncha damned lurkers.  Activity level is the same (logins, traffic, etc.), but only a few are making / responding to threads.   I'd have to agree that both titles are awesome though.  It's certainly one of the best looking CEs I've ever seen.  Hoping the game can be stable on launch!

Sadly I have mostly moved in to the lurker realm, and rarely that...irrational as it is, the forum consolidation killed most of my desire to post here anymore as I don't venture in to the combined PC/Console forum which took out half of what I used to read.

[Lockdown]

Man I am excited for this.  It feels like I've been following GW2 for so long.  I almost can't believe I'll playing tomorrow!

[Hotfreak]

In!

[Harkonis]

I logged in immediately, and someone had already taken my name.  I'm more than a little irritated.   

[Hotfreak]

Extremely laggy.  At least I got my desired name: Harkonis. 

 

[Harkonis]

I will find you, then verify if you are telling the truth after I deal with you.

[Hotfreak]

I will find you, then verify if you are telling the truth after I deal with you.

I hope it's just a wanderer, joking around with you.

[Teggy]

Sigh...connection problems.

[Arclight]

Something that we've reluctantly become accustomed to.
No joy here either.

[Toe]

Can't log in this morning. This message is on the support page
"We’re experiencing heavy volume right now and our login servers are under high load. We’re monitoring the situation and working to improve the situation."

I just keep trying to log in. Anyone gotten in eventually doing this?

[ericb]

Check here ( http://www.facebook.com/GuildWars2 )...seems to be the most up to date info.  They are completely down login wise.

[Knightshade Dragon]

plenty of buzz on OO, QT3, Broken Forums and the Wanderers.  I think GT has just been a bit slow on activity lately.  (there is also next to zero talk about Transformers, which is pretty amazing both SP and MP)

Buncha damned lurkers.  Activity level is the same (logins, traffic, etc.), but only a few are making / responding to threads.   I'd have to agree that both titles are awesome though.  It's certainly one of the best looking CEs I've ever seen.  Hoping the game can be stable on launch!

Sadly I have mostly moved in to the lurker realm, and rarely that...irrational as it is, the forum consolidation killed most of my desire to post here anymore as I don't venture in to the combined PC/Console forum which took out half of what I used to read.

I'm confused.  All of the threads are there.  What part is missing?

[Arkon]

plenty of buzz on OO, QT3, Broken Forums and the Wanderers.  I think GT has just been a bit slow on activity lately.  (there is also next to zero talk about Transformers, which is pretty amazing both SP and MP)

Buncha damned lurkers.  Activity level is the same (logins, traffic, etc.), but only a few are making / responding to threads.   I'd have to agree that both titles are awesome though.  It's certainly one of the best looking CEs I've ever seen.  Hoping the game can be stable on launch!

Sadly I have mostly moved in to the lurker realm, and rarely that...irrational as it is, the forum consolidation killed most of my desire to post here anymore as I don't venture in to the combined PC/Console forum which took out half of what I used to read.

I'm confused.  All of the threads are there.  What part is missing?

Poorly worded on my part.  The threads are there, but I find it isn't worth the effort to sift through the console posts to find the PC posts, so half of the threads I used to read, I don't read anymore.  In turn this has led to me not visiting GT nearly as often as I am finding less discussions I am interested in.

[USMC Kato]

I logged in immediately, and someone had already taken my name.  I'm more than a little irritated.   

Strange. USMC Kato, Kato, Katos are all taken

[rshetts2]

Yes they have and for the right price they can be had! 

[Lockdown]

Having a blast playing this over the weekend!  Loving the game.

[vizionblind]

huge crafting guide

http://gaiscioch.com/tavern/guildwars_crafting/post_35198.html

[Razgon]

I logged in immediately, and someone had already taken my name.  I'm more than a little irritated.   

Strange. USMC Kato, Kato, Katos are all taken

I had the same issue with a few of my names,and then it hit that perhaps its the linking of Guild Wars 1 accounts, that is the reason for this? My characters name is often Khargol, and its the one I used on GW1, but it was taken, which is a first for me - Would this be the reason you think?

Other than that - What a gloriously great game!

[Harkonis]

GW1 could only be used to save 2 word names

[Scraper]

I logged in immediately, and someone had already taken my name.  I'm more than a little irritated.   

Strange. USMC Kato, Kato, Katos are all taken

I had the same issue with a few of my names,and then it hit that perhaps its the linking of Guild Wars 1 accounts, that is the reason for this? My characters name is often Khargol, and its the one I used on GW1, but it was taken, which is a first for me - Would this be the reason you think?

Other than that - What a gloriously great game!

The biggest  problem is that once a name is taken on any server, it is taken for them all. Bad idea IMO, but that's why names are not available. I got all of mine in because I logged on as soon as the game went live and reserved them.

[Arclight]

Really enjoying the game so far. I've taken a couple of toons to the 7-9 range. I haven't been on as much as I'd like.
I think I'm going to go Engineer for the first crack at higher levels. So much fun shooting pistols, blunderbuss rifles, underwater spearguns, tossing grenades and laying mines. I really like the ease at which to change from one discipline to the other. The guns have got that sweet spot of sound and action to really make shooting mobs in the face.
I picked the Root folk as my race and really digging how they've been fleshed out...or should I say barked out?

As a non- guild, solo player I think I've got lots of hours of fun ahead.

Running everything on max with a GTX-580 feels butter slick.

So happy that this game does what's advertised for a change.

This will be my home game for months if not a year or two.

[Blackadar]

Guild Wars 2 First Impressions:

Over the weekend I got to really jump into GW2 for the first time since Beta 2. It's been a while. Here's some off-the-cuff impressions of my journey to level 21:

Technical: Not bad for a launch. Not bad at all. They brought the servers up promptly at midnight, which was 3 hours early. They were slammed, but it worked well. I managed to create a few characters and while I didn't get all the names I wanted, I got most of the important ones. One thing about GW2 is that names are unique to the game and not the server. So there won't be 2 different "Blackadar" characters on two different servers. I think they need a random name generator, because good names are already scarce. The overflow server concept worked well. I found myself often in the overflow, but it didn't prevent me from logging in and having fun. Much, much better option than queues. The only grumble is that you can't queue up for WvWvW from an overflow server, so if you're kicked during a match, you have to log back in, get through the overflow server and then queue back up for WvWvW.

Saturday morning the game was down for an extended period - I tried getting on about 7AM and quit about 9:30 AM and never got on. But Saturday evening and most of the day Sunday I was able to play with no issues. I did get kicked out once on Sunday evening in a WvWvW match, but that was the only disconnect.

The Auction House was down all yesterday, so I can't comment on that.

Graphical: It runs like a champ on my less-than-optimal video card at high resolutions. I'm constantly getting 30-40FPS with high textures. The environments are gorgeous and so are the monsters. It's not afraid to show you how beautiful it is, either. When you find those overlook points, you get a slow, sweeping view of the entire area. Only then do you realize how amazing it looks. Most of the spell animations are pretty good, though some could use some work - my guardian spells are a bit bland. I'd like to see more visible shields and stuff like that. Some of the fire spells look great.

Even with major battles in WvWvW, the game ran fine. I had very little stutter or frame rate loss, even with a lot going on. It did get choppy in a couple of places, but that's to be expected with so much going on. I didn't notice much of a difference between high and medium textures, so dropping the textures is a way to boost the frame rate without sacrificing beauty.

Sound: I've always thought that sound was especially important in MMOs. Spells, battles and weapons all get more oomph from the sounds which go with those actions when there's good effects. Guild Wars 2 doesn't disappoint. Whistling arrows are especially neat and the impact of a two-handed hammer is different than the swoosh of a sword. Very well done. I don't really remember the music, which is probably a good thing. Usually memorable music in a MMO means I'm turning it off.

PvE Gameplay: It may be evolutionary and not revolutionary, but it's an improvement. Running around and working on dynamic events is vastly more enjoyable than "kill x ogres", even if a few events boil down to killing ogres. Some of the events/quests weren't great (one in particular about spraying blue stuff on some frog people was very confusing), but most were good if not great.

What is revolutionary is what the quests do to the community. Because there's no kill-stealing, node-stealing or XP loss for group kills, the community instinctively works together. In any other game, if you die, you might as well resurrect at the spawn point because people will just step over your body to get to the next mob. Here, people will take the time to resurrect you because you can help them as soon as you're up. It's an awesome dynamic and the game feels like it has the old EQ or start-of-WoW kind of community - cooperative, not competitive. There were only a couple of quests that I did where I felt I was competing against others.

When you get tired of event-driven questing, then you hit your story line. They're as good as a good SWTOR story and give your character a sense of purpose or help make you feel unique - a difficult thing in an MMO. I've enjoyed every one of my story quests greatly.

It says something that when I was PvPing last night and leveling, I was thinking about "out-leveling" the content and I was a bit concerned about that. Then I realized that with down ranking levels so they're appropriate for the content and so forth, I haven't missed a thing. I'm going back to PvE more and I don't care if I'm level 21, 25 or 30. I'll still go back and do some of those level 16 events. Why? Because they're fun and I still get credit. When the makers of GW2 talked about a different leveling experience for every character, I didn't believe that at first. Now I do. Because once you're level 10 or so, how you level and where you level is mainly up to you. Want to go explore the beginning Charr area as a level 20 Norn? Go do it. You'll get plenty of XP and have a blast doing it. For the first time, I don't have to go from zone to zone as dictated by my level. The only advantage to leveling up is that I can just go to more places (though the higher level places will have better gear/money rewards).

PvP Gameplay: I only played WvWvW, so that's what I'm basing this off of. I am not a fan of PvP. I'm generally pretty bad at it, I get killed a bunch, pick squishy support classes that are no fun in PvP and so forth. And the first hour or so in WvWvW, I didn't have much fun. I ran out, got rolled, died, repeat. Then I started to figure it out a bit. What my role was. What was going on. And I'm about to pay GW2 a major compliment - this is what Warhammer Online should have been. Considering how much I loved WAR when it came out, that's high praise. There's just so much to do. The maps are huge. Want to help the team by securing some supplies? Get a small squad together and do it. Want to take some keeps? Get in with the zerg. Want to help the team and solo a bit? Go kill some of the monsters so that other monsters side with your team. Want to just run around and look at the vistas? Do it (though you need to avoid the zerg). Siege weapons work wonderfully and I had an absolute blast playing WvWvW last night. Yeah, some classes are more powerful than others, but this isn't a 1-on-1 game.

Technically, it worked great too. Even with dozens of players on my screen, I didn't have major problems with frame rate. I didn't get pulled through walls. I didn't fall through the earth. 3 Bright Wizards couldn't control the map. I was able to just have fun.

Crafting: I didn't do enough to really comment, though finding mats is a bit of a challenge. Looks interesting and people seem to be getting some decent stuff by crafting.

Overall: Now these are first impressions. I have no idea how the game holds up in 2 weeks or 2 months. But I've been burned out playing MMOs the last couple of years and with the Secret World and SWTOR, I was able to dismiss those during betas as not worthy of my time. GW2 feels different at this stage. I want to level...but for the first time ever in a MMO, I don't need to. I want to get better with my guardian, but I wouldn't mind taking a couple of other classes out for a test drive. I want to do some PvE instances, but there's so much to do in the world that I'm not in any hurry. Right now, I'm simply having fun. The endgame may suck. I don't know at this point. But I wouldn't mind leveling another character in this game, because it's such a great experience. And with no $15/mo fee, I can take a break and come back at my leisure. Right now, this game gets two huge thumbs-up from me.

[skystride]

Too busy playing to make longer posts than this but yeah, game is awesome!

[greeneggsnham]

+1 to the above. Game is made of win and packed with awesome... logging back in now...

[Teggy]

One of the fun features of Lion's Arch

[skystride]

Heh I was actually watching people diving off during the panoramic from he vista.

So cool to see remnants of original Lion's Arch underwater.  I also stumbled into a dungeon full of traps while trying to find a Vista in lion's arch.  It's not marked on the map, it's not a quest.  It's just there for people who like to explore.  So many nice touches like that in the game.

[The Grue]

So is this game the savior of MMOs or what?  I've sworn off buying any more as I came to the realization recently that I can't do any more kill X quests or find x item quests any more or I will go crazy.  Why will this game be different?