Post by Morreion on Aug 27, 2012 13:16:29 GMT -5
I had a good time staying up too late and playing too long!
The servers opened up 3 hours early, like they said could possibly happen- I promptly got in at midnight, reserved my names and got on the Tarnished Coast server. All went smoothly at the beginning.
Morreion, Norn Engineer
Morreion and Jaema
Morreion, Jaema and Oatik (an Asura Engineer). I look like I'm staring at Oat in a bewildered manner!
A view from a Vista point- these are usually in a challenging area to get to.
My Norn Engineer is now level 11, and he spent some time visiting a lot of waypoints, vistas, points of interest, and skill points in his starting zone and capital city. GW2 gives explorer types a lot to do- there are tons of places to visit to fill in a map, which earns you achievements.
Combat in a dynamic event
The dynamic events are a refinement of WAR's public quests and Rift's rifts- and outside of your personal story quests, they largely replace the static wall o' text run of the mill kill this deliver this quests, which I really like- quest-grinding is getting old. Going from one dynamic event to another while killing mobs in between them remineded me somewhat of DAoC's hunting and spawn camping, back in the day before having a thousand solo quests became mandatory and helped to wreck players interacting with each other.
Frighten the bunnies- the rabbit feed must get through!
One of my favorite dynamic events was attempting to carry rabbit feed through a field dotted with rabbit holes, out of which hungry rabbits would pop and trip you up so you would spill the food for them to eat. You could frighten the rabbits if you timed things well, and amble on slowly, your arms filled with the big feed bags. This reminded me of some of the light-hearted Shire quests in LOTRO. Dynamic events had lots of variety to them!
The scenery was well-done, and varied in different zones. I continue to be frustrated by the limitations of the camera view while taking screenshots- it's hard to get non-generic-looking images, unfortunately.
Keg Brawl is a great sport-like mini-game!
I played a few games of Keg Brawl, which was a blast, in the Norn capital city. Two teams competed in moving a keg downfield to score a goal. You have abilities such as punching, kicking and foot stomping to send opponents flying, which is good fun. All of these abilities are on timers, so there is some strategy involved on when to give a player a boot up the behind!
There are lots of things that the game does differently than the usual MMO. Three examples: if you see a resource node, don't worry about getting to it first- everyone can harvest it. And there are no mailboxes- you can mail anyone from anywhere. In combat, you just don't die- you enter a downed state, knocked off your feet but still able to fight in a weakened manner, with a chance to rally and regain your feet. Though you can still die and have to respawn.
Your experience is largely earned filling in your maps and doing the dynamic events and your personal story quests- grinding mobs doesn't earn you much learning.
Dual pistols, hmmm...
Blunderbuss!
The weapons you use unlock new abilities by using them. You earn skill points and apply them to earning new abilities for your hotbar.
Technically, the game ran well for me. on Saturday the game was down for hours, and I don't think the official forums ever came up all weekend, which was an odd lack of communication from ArenaNet. The auction house never worked, either. But when I was in the game, it ran smoothly, save for the occasional chat lag.
I haven't tried PvP yet (though Keg Brawl is sort of a PvP minigame), I'll have to try that soon.
Overall, I'm happy with GW2 and think that this one is a keeper. Even better, since there's no subscription, it's a modest expense for all of the entertainment provided. We'll see how the cash shop evolves, but so far so good!
The servers opened up 3 hours early, like they said could possibly happen- I promptly got in at midnight, reserved my names and got on the Tarnished Coast server. All went smoothly at the beginning.
Morreion, Norn Engineer
Morreion and Jaema
Morreion, Jaema and Oatik (an Asura Engineer). I look like I'm staring at Oat in a bewildered manner!
A view from a Vista point- these are usually in a challenging area to get to.
My Norn Engineer is now level 11, and he spent some time visiting a lot of waypoints, vistas, points of interest, and skill points in his starting zone and capital city. GW2 gives explorer types a lot to do- there are tons of places to visit to fill in a map, which earns you achievements.
Combat in a dynamic event
The dynamic events are a refinement of WAR's public quests and Rift's rifts- and outside of your personal story quests, they largely replace the static wall o' text run of the mill kill this deliver this quests, which I really like- quest-grinding is getting old. Going from one dynamic event to another while killing mobs in between them remineded me somewhat of DAoC's hunting and spawn camping, back in the day before having a thousand solo quests became mandatory and helped to wreck players interacting with each other.
Frighten the bunnies- the rabbit feed must get through!
One of my favorite dynamic events was attempting to carry rabbit feed through a field dotted with rabbit holes, out of which hungry rabbits would pop and trip you up so you would spill the food for them to eat. You could frighten the rabbits if you timed things well, and amble on slowly, your arms filled with the big feed bags. This reminded me of some of the light-hearted Shire quests in LOTRO. Dynamic events had lots of variety to them!
The scenery was well-done, and varied in different zones. I continue to be frustrated by the limitations of the camera view while taking screenshots- it's hard to get non-generic-looking images, unfortunately.
Keg Brawl is a great sport-like mini-game!
I played a few games of Keg Brawl, which was a blast, in the Norn capital city. Two teams competed in moving a keg downfield to score a goal. You have abilities such as punching, kicking and foot stomping to send opponents flying, which is good fun. All of these abilities are on timers, so there is some strategy involved on when to give a player a boot up the behind!
There are lots of things that the game does differently than the usual MMO. Three examples: if you see a resource node, don't worry about getting to it first- everyone can harvest it. And there are no mailboxes- you can mail anyone from anywhere. In combat, you just don't die- you enter a downed state, knocked off your feet but still able to fight in a weakened manner, with a chance to rally and regain your feet. Though you can still die and have to respawn.
Your experience is largely earned filling in your maps and doing the dynamic events and your personal story quests- grinding mobs doesn't earn you much learning.
Dual pistols, hmmm...
Blunderbuss!
The weapons you use unlock new abilities by using them. You earn skill points and apply them to earning new abilities for your hotbar.
Technically, the game ran well for me. on Saturday the game was down for hours, and I don't think the official forums ever came up all weekend, which was an odd lack of communication from ArenaNet. The auction house never worked, either. But when I was in the game, it ran smoothly, save for the occasional chat lag.
I haven't tried PvP yet (though Keg Brawl is sort of a PvP minigame), I'll have to try that soon.
Overall, I'm happy with GW2 and think that this one is a keeper. Even better, since there's no subscription, it's a modest expense for all of the entertainment provided. We'll see how the cash shop evolves, but so far so good!
