Guild Wars 2: My first Impression.
SQUEEEE!
Guild Wars 2 was released last Tuesday (Aug25) and I'd been doing my best not to stalk it. I loved Guild Wars, have all but the Norn expansion (yay college) and a variety of stuff I probably shouldn't have spent money on but can't really bring myself to regret it (yay gamer magazine vanity pets)!
It's gorgeous, even with my graphics turned as low as they go (seen above).
They took out the instancing, which I'm kind of upset about. It seems to mean that there WILL be competition for quest mobs... except.. if you walk up on someone killing your mob, you automatically join in the "event" and get a participation rating (that I think probably alters your xp, but I'm unsure). You can participate in the event as many times as it happens, but I'm unsure about repeat xp.
I really like it so far. I miss certain things from GW, but I'm honestly still in the starting zone where they teach you how to do things.
Biggest thing I miss: the click to move. GW was WASD, with mouse turn, and/or left+right mouse and you'd move forward. You could also click a spot ahead of you and auto path. They took the autopath out.
I can dye my clothes without dye.. but I know there will be certain dyes that can be made later since they've put in a crafting system.
The achievement system has been altered to be more WoWlike. So basically, it's all the cool stuff I liked from GW, plus the things that made WoW popular. Where D3 was a pale imitation of the its dungeon crawler parent, this seems like a pretty good MMO progeny of GW sleeping with Mr WoWMilkman.
Since there are different races there are different starting zones. I've read that you can play with a friend of another race by making it to the waypoint in the main city and warping over, but Husband and I simply made the same race to avoid it.
The servers are seriously overloaded right now.
A: The digital downloads are sold out "to limit purchase and keep server quality high". We had purchased one hard copy for fast install, but it seemed like all the hard copy did was launch the downloader. It's a 7 gig dvd, so it MUST have done something, but I still had to download 20k files. Husband DLd 170k files, so I think my previous GW install has shared frameworks. I had to go back and buy a digital download code from the Gamestop.
...a... The digital download code form the Gamestop forces you to get the Gamestop App (think Steam). It made me nervous and had me thinking I would be forced to play it in the GS shell. FEAR NOT! You can copy the gamekey and paste it into the GW2 registration as if it was a box code. No shell.
B: I made my character an hour before Shane, and by the time he could make one the server was full. I had to transfer to the one he could populate. transferring costs karma, but the price was zero (which was good since I have none) probably because it was the first transfer or I'm level 1 or maybe because I was technically moving to a less populated server in the first week of release. Who knows?
C: I don't know if the half-significant lag is the server or my video card (which is technically too low for D3 and GW2, but as long as I CAN play I'm not paying for another one. For instance: D3 sewers, laggy for me but not unplayable.. most of the time.
I'd say seriously give it a month to calm down. We'll be only playing an hour here or there due to school life, but I will of course be spamming the interwebz with what I find to squee or grumble about.
You can DL it without being able to log in. If you plan on play I
recommend DLing the installer, feeding it your GW1 login and letting it
DL overnight once a week or so to keep updated. Otherwise, well, you
remember GW1 when you hadn't played in a while. O_O
I'll keep posting pics and things.
And playing the chocobo themesong for Shane, though he has no idea what it is. Heathen. So far I'm the only ranger I've seen who picked the Moa. Poor unloved chocobo.
 |
| A girl and her moa. |
It's gorgeous, even with my graphics turned as low as they go (seen above).
They took out the instancing, which I'm kind of upset about. It seems to mean that there WILL be competition for quest mobs... except.. if you walk up on someone killing your mob, you automatically join in the "event" and get a participation rating (that I think probably alters your xp, but I'm unsure). You can participate in the event as many times as it happens, but I'm unsure about repeat xp.
I really like it so far. I miss certain things from GW, but I'm honestly still in the starting zone where they teach you how to do things.
Biggest thing I miss: the click to move. GW was WASD, with mouse turn, and/or left+right mouse and you'd move forward. You could also click a spot ahead of you and auto path. They took the autopath out.
I can dye my clothes without dye.. but I know there will be certain dyes that can be made later since they've put in a crafting system.
 |
| Clothes can be dyed from the equipment screen with basic dyes. You have an automatic set of Town Clothes you can switch to if you don't want to run around in your armor. |
Since there are different races there are different starting zones. I've read that you can play with a friend of another race by making it to the waypoint in the main city and warping over, but Husband and I simply made the same race to avoid it.
The servers are seriously overloaded right now.
A: The digital downloads are sold out "to limit purchase and keep server quality high". We had purchased one hard copy for fast install, but it seemed like all the hard copy did was launch the downloader. It's a 7 gig dvd, so it MUST have done something, but I still had to download 20k files. Husband DLd 170k files, so I think my previous GW install has shared frameworks. I had to go back and buy a digital download code from the Gamestop.
...a... The digital download code form the Gamestop forces you to get the Gamestop App (think Steam). It made me nervous and had me thinking I would be forced to play it in the GS shell. FEAR NOT! You can copy the gamekey and paste it into the GW2 registration as if it was a box code. No shell.
B: I made my character an hour before Shane, and by the time he could make one the server was full. I had to transfer to the one he could populate. transferring costs karma, but the price was zero (which was good since I have none) probably because it was the first transfer or I'm level 1 or maybe because I was technically moving to a less populated server in the first week of release. Who knows?
C: I don't know if the half-significant lag is the server or my video card (which is technically too low for D3 and GW2, but as long as I CAN play I'm not paying for another one. For instance: D3 sewers, laggy for me but not unplayable.. most of the time.
I'd say seriously give it a month to calm down. We'll be only playing an hour here or there due to school life, but I will of course be spamming the interwebz with what I find to squee or grumble about.
 |
| Kegr Steinseiderwyr, Elementalist in the College of Statics. I couldn't NOT go through character creation for the Asura. To me she feels like a Half-Kender-Half-Goblin raised by WoW-Gnomes. SQUEEE. |
I'll keep posting pics and things.
And playing the chocobo themesong for Shane, though he has no idea what it is. Heathen. So far I'm the only ranger I've seen who picked the Moa. Poor unloved chocobo.
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