Guild Wars 2 public Beta is here for pre-purchases! [Stress Test June 27th]

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The downside of it is that, like a poster said above, you aren't really progressing towards anything. You get a cool new weapon, you want to smack people with it. In GW2, you'll be doing basically the same damage forever. That's awesome for new people, but without anything pushing people forward besides skins, will people stay?

It's a reason why Halo multiplayer isn't as popular as CoD. Great, balanced gameplay does not always shine when there isn't any incentive. My favorite PVP experiences were getting an Ashkandi and just ripping people apart in vanilla WoW. That feeling of power is an incredibly strong driving force in an MMO.

Of course, if the gameplay is fun on its own who cares about loot. But this is still an MMO.
 
How does everyone feel about the whole "everyone being equal" in PVP? I'm torn. Love loot, but hate the imbalances it causes. But without loot, I might as well play not play an MMO.

Not a big deal in PVP. It's suppose to be balanced.

It's a bigger issue in PVE when you are scaled to everyone's level. Kind of destroys any sense of progressions.
 
The downside of it is that, like a poster said above, you aren't really progressing towards anything. You get a cool new weapon, you want to smack people with it. In GW2, you'll be doing basically the same damage forever. That's awesome for new people, but without anything pushing people forward besides skins, will people stay?

It's a reason why Halo multiplayer isn't as popular as CoD. Great, balanced gameplay does not always shine when there isn't any incentive. My favorite PVP experiences were getting an Ashkandi and just ripping people apart in vanilla WoW. That feeling of power is an incredibly strong driving force in an MMO.

Of course, if the gameplay is fun on its own who cares about loot. But this is still an MMO.

I understand where you're coming from but I would prefer horizontal advancement over vertical any day. The carrot on the stick is to look better than the next guy and by doing so, you essentially are better.
 
I think GW2 will come out in June. June 26th, to be exact. That is the date that GameStop has listed as its release date. When GameStop uses placeholder dates, they are usually something like 12/31/2012 or 1/1/2013. But June 26th is a very specific date -- a Tuesday, in fact, which is the typical release day of the week for North American releases. In addition, a June 26th release would give ArenaNet three total beta weekends: one in April, one in May, one in early June. That should be plenty. To be honest, I actually hope it comes out later than June 26th, because I will be completely immersed in The Secret World at that time, but yeah... I think June 26th is the day.
 
gah don't go on their official forums. They are absolutely awful.

Play in a early beta test -> complain that there's bugs and things aren't perfectly balanced -> Demand your money back.

Just terrible
 
I think GW2 will come out in June. June 26th, to be exact. That is the date that GameStop has listed as its release date. When GameStop uses placeholder dates, they are usually something like 12/31/2012 or 1/1/2013. But June 26th is a very specific date -- a Tuesday, in fact, which is the typical release day of the week for North American releases. In addition, a June 26th release would give ArenaNet three total beta weekends: one in April, one in May, one in early June. That should be plenty. To be honest, I actually hope it comes out later than June 26th, because I will be completely immersed in The Secret World at that time, but yeah... I think June 26th is the day.

If it comes out in June, then a June beta would not make any sense. I think it should come out this month, but I doubt it will. :(
 
I think GW2 will come out in June. June 26th, to be exact. That is the date that GameStop has listed as its release date. When GameStop uses placeholder dates, they are usually something like 12/31/2012 or 1/1/2013. But June 26th is a very specific date -- a Tuesday, in fact, which is the typical release day of the week for North American releases. In addition, a June 26th release would give ArenaNet three total beta weekends: one in April, one in May, one in early June. That should be plenty. To be honest, I actually hope it comes out later than June 26th, because I will be completely immersed in The Secret World at that time, but yeah... I think June 26th is the day.

...Not sure if you're being serious or not, but have you played the beta? The game really needs more polish before it can go for a launch. Making all these changes is next to impossible to fulfill a June 26 deadline.

Just not possible.
 
The downside of it is that, like a poster said above, you aren't really progressing towards anything. You get a cool new weapon, you want to smack people with it. In GW2, you'll be doing basically the same damage forever. That's awesome for new people, but without anything pushing people forward besides skins, will people stay?

It's a reason why Halo multiplayer isn't as popular as CoD. Great, balanced gameplay does not always shine when there isn't any incentive. My favorite PVP experiences were getting an Ashkandi and just ripping people apart in vanilla WoW. That feeling of power is an incredibly strong driving force in an MMO.

Of course, if the gameplay is fun on its own who cares about loot. But this is still an MMO.

Loot only doesn't matter in 5v5 really. It still matters in everything else?
 
The downside of it is that, like a poster said above, you aren't really progressing towards anything. You get a cool new weapon, you want to smack people with it. In GW2, you'll be doing basically the same damage forever. That's awesome for new people, but without anything pushing people forward besides skins, will people stay?

It's a reason why Halo multiplayer isn't as popular as CoD. Great, balanced gameplay does not always shine when there isn't any incentive. My favorite PVP experiences were getting an Ashkandi and just ripping people apart in vanilla WoW. That feeling of power is an incredibly strong driving force in an MMO.

Of course, if the gameplay is fun on its own who cares about loot. But this is still an MMO.

I guess I agree a little, it isn't there in the hotjoin aspect of the PvP, but I think a big draw will be when they introduce the tournaments. I think then the focus will be on builds and group builds and what not. Sure the better weapon isn't there for one person to shine, but that's not what their going for with 5v5 and the e-sport viability of the game. Same with Halo, before 4(ugh) it is widely seen as the more competitive and usually has a more competitive backing and community, which is also what ANet wants with their PvP this go around.
 
gah don't go on their official forums. They are absolutely awful.

Play in a early beta test -> complain that there's bugs and things aren't perfectly balanced -> Demand your money back.

Just terrible

I know yesterday only people asking for refunds were ones who had account issues and never got to play or barely played.
 
The downside of it is that, like a poster said above, you aren't really progressing towards anything. You get a cool new weapon, you want to smack people with it. In GW2, you'll be doing basically the same damage forever. That's awesome for new people, but without anything pushing people forward besides skins, will people stay?

It's a reason why Halo multiplayer isn't as popular as CoD. Great, balanced gameplay does not always shine when there isn't any incentive. My favorite PVP experiences were getting an Ashkandi and just ripping people apart in vanilla WoW. That feeling of power is an incredibly strong driving force in an MMO.

Of course, if the gameplay is fun on its own who cares about loot. But this is still an MMO.

Yeah, in my above I sort of touched on this topic, but we do share similar thoughts.

The draw to loot for me was about stats and all that, and getting powerful, but in GW2, perhaps I need to get away from that thinking and realize loot will have stats sure, but perhaps It'll be for cosmetic reasons. (I really dont know, I'm not an expert)

The draw for WvW for me was the persistance, it'll be neat when things launch and it's a 2 week long battle and fighting for territories. It's exactly what I loved in Arathi Basin, but on a massive scale.

Of course, it was much easier to get a grasp on pvp in this beta rather than the long term of PVE, so maybe that will suck me in constantly as well.
 
In my limited mind I view GW2 mutliplayer similiar to fighting games. Everyone starts with their full abilities and equal footing (so to speak), and you can buy a costume or two to differentiate yourself. People who play fighting games pour themselves into the mechanics and finding all the little querks and intricacies of game.

It will probably be similiar for those that stick with PvP for GW2.
 
...Not sure if you're being serious or not, but have you played the beta? The game really needs more polish before it can go for a launch. Making all these changes is next to impossible to fulfill a June 26 deadline.

Just not possible.

How much polish does it need? Again i'm reiterating but I have a 6 year-old PC and it ran smooth. The only problems I encountered were latency and that was fixed with a small patch later on that day. I one bug that had some monsters appearing underground but other than that, nothing major.
 
If it comes out in June, then a June beta would not make any sense. I think it should come out this month, but I doubt it will. :(

Sure it would. A beta weekend in early June would be an excellent stress test for their servers and give them at least 3 weeks to implement necessary upgrades.
 
gah don't go on their official forums. They are absolutely awful.

Play in a early beta test -> complain that there's bugs and things aren't perfectly balanced -> Demand your money back.

Just terrible

I like the official forums but I have also stayed on the dev tracker mainly and I love seeing how receptive Anet are to criticism (Bobby Stein for instance is actively seeking feedback in one thread).

It's a big reason why I love Anet, they do listen to their fans.
 
How much polish does it need? Again i'm reiterating but I have a 6 year-old PC and it ran smooth. The only problems I encountered were latency and that was fixed with a small patch later on that day. I one bug that had some monsters appearing underground but other than that, nothing major.

Did you play your storyline stuff? I had some crashes or weird characters that seemed out of place during the cutscenes. I'm a big storyline geek and that's where my focus is mainly on. It's not the graphics that I care about, and yes due to latency all my attacks seemed to register 2 seconds after I hit the button to attack.

Still needs work no matter what.
 
Did you play your storyline stuff? I had some crashes or weird characters that seemed out of place during the cutscenes. I'm a big storyline geek and that's where my focus is mainly on. It's not the graphics that I care about, and yes due to latency all my attacks seemed to register 2 seconds after I hit the button to attack.

Still needs work no matter what.

I agree, work needs to be done and will continue to be worked on even after release. I honestly didn't touch the story because i'm waiting until release. I did play quite a few DE's, tons of PVP in both instanced and WvWvW and encountered very few bugs. Latency was a problem during the first few hours but then they brought down the servers to do a small patch and for some reason, all the lag was fixed. Not sure what they did but bravo.
 
Ok, after rocking Mesmer for a day and a half and then jumping into WvW a few hours before the beta ended, I take back some of what I said about melee being a trap.

But I was right that you need to either have a lot of skills for it, or trait yourself for it, and the frustrating part came from using classes that start out without the skills and therefore need the traits for it more.

This video was posted earlier in the thread, and I'll repost here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhRxmobfOCo

Basically, Warriors have a lot of ways to dive into and out of melee without taking too much damage (in part because of their large armor). Guardians obviously have a lot too. Mesmers has 1-2 counter/block/evade skills on each of their weapons as well. Those three may end up being my favorite classes in the game after I've tried them all.

I still need to see how Thief does it, with all of their Shadow Step and stealth abilities, and the Necromancer, since they have Dark Shroud and extremely high health to make up for their armor deficiency.

I can't wait for the next beta.
 
I like Halo but it's crazy that we're living in a time where that series is the "competitive alternative" to more popular shooters.

For console at least. Also it's more just 1-3, and it's always after MLG get's involved, the game on it's own is rarely perfect for competitive balance I agree. But it over CoD? Without a doubt, which is why I was comparing it having the competitive aspect even if it's multiplayer isn't as popular as CoD anymore.
 
I agree, work needs to be done and will continue to be worked on even after release. I honestly didn't touch the story because i'm waiting until release. I did play quite a few DE's, tons of PVP in both instanced and WvWvW and encountered very few bugs. Latency was a problem during the first few hours but then they brought down the servers to do a small patch and for some reason, all the lag was fixed. Not sure what they did but bravo.

Oh yeah I agree with your discussion about patching the lag and such. Overflow servers were a problem since I couldn't join with my friends on the same stuff. Even my brother was somehow moved to another server. Irritable I say! *smacks cane on table*

I do believe however, the main parts of the game seem very well done, and my best moment was wandering around with my tiny team of 3 and seeing the Shadow Behemoth for the first time.

Oh and the weather, the beautiful weather.
 
Maybe not, but if there's a significant amount of backlash about a crappy release, ANet's PR wouldn't even be able to save the team. Look at Warhammer for example.

If this weekend's beta was the release, I don't think anyone would call it a "crappy" release. It was pretty solid for where it is in the development cycle. Or maybe I have low standards compared to other MMO launches I've experienced :\ I think the biggest hurdles moving forward have to do with better handling the massive amounts of people that will be playing rather than the core game itself.
 
The real force behind the dragons:

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I was playing as a Guardian healer in PvP and WvW and got dominated. Perhaps I'm a bit bad though; I've always preferred PvE.

And a friend of mine and his friends have sunk in loads of time into WoW. When I asked them if this was better, they said yes. Better than the Old Republic? Definitely yes.
 
Quite a bit. Having an older system for this game is likely an asset, especially if you have a single-core processor, since that's all the game uses. It barely uses GPUs; I'm sure that part of that was them gathering playdata from users (I'm not sure if they have a way to track performance but it would be smart if they did) to optimize for common GPUs and go from there. Either way, it will not launch running anything like it did during this beta. Very few of us could run it properly with even a few players on-screen.

Then there's balance. The scaling seems to tip from moderate to crazy insane raid situations very suddenly, and it also leads to problems like having masses of enemies spawning behind you out of nowhere if, for example, a big group enters a cave behind you. You're likely already dead by the time you figure out what the hell is going on.

PvP/WvW need massive tuning. Melee is basically not viable for DPS. I doubt Anet will ship the game in such a state. PvE has the same issue but much less so, especially once you figure out dodging (fewer players than expected seemed to from the grouping I did).

The personal stories are scaled oddly as well. It seems like human players mostly finished their run; I played Charr and I heard from several Norn players the same story: You can end up hitting a brick wall where the difficulty scales too high, your AI partners get wiped, and you have no chance of taking out anybody. And because of level scaling, you can't grind your way out of the situation, so it's purely a balancing issue, or perhaps mastering some aspects of the game that many of us didn't figure out yet.

Lastly, there's the glut of plain old unfinished content. We don't know the status of two of the races. Random scouts were not voiced at all. Various blatant glitches such as a skill point location that only becomes active after a server reset were all around the world. WvWvW has kind of off pacing where too much time is spent traveling, though that might be intentional.

Yeah, there is a hell of a lot to fix. And that's without really getting my hands dirty with specs and stats and skill issues.

As far as true betas go, though, I was incredibly impressed with the game. The uptime was actually pretty good for the first major stress test. Many MMOs have launched in far worse shape regarding that. Overflow works amazingly, except for the fixable issue of breaking up parties. Guild chat was up and down but by the end of the beta it was rock solid. And most importantly, the game is challenging and fun as hell, the first time I've played an MMO and actually found something beyond my expectations. An MMO focused on skill, that cuts out most of the boring bullshit, that rewards exploration and world PvE, that encourages working with absolute strangers, that provides a fair PvP environment... and I didn't even touch crafting yet!

This game is going to be amazing. But I'm not sure if June is possible.

There's always going to be balance issues from release until the game ceases to exist. I never really encountered issues with massive enemies appearing out of nowhere slaughtering me or my party so that must of been rare. I did hear about issues involving the personal stories in which I didn't partake so that's understandable. Lastly, to point out the viability of melee in WvWvW is completely undermined. I had few issues fighting in close combat as a guardian but of course, ranged had almost no thread which occurs in most games. I do believe balance in this aspect will be handled accordingly.

It just seemed to me there was tons of content to partake in, fun pvp(even with balance issues) and even with the few occasional disconnects, you could log back within a matter of minutes.
 
I would have to say it'll be out BY August but I can't really say much else until I see the next beta and what fixes or changes they have made based on feedback from BWE1.
 
There's always going to be balance issues from release until the game ceases to exist. I never really encountered issues with massive enemies appearing out of nowhere slaughtering me or my party so that must of been rare.

I think he's referring to certain events, that if not done with a large enough group/zerg rush, it can be quite difficult to handle.

I know I came across a few in which you have to push through to a certain objective/boss/point while fighting through mobs. However, if you're not fast enough, the mobs you killed behind you will respawn and ambush. It's especially easy to re-aggro them with all the dodging going on.

Or maybe he's talking about something else, but that was my experience with events.
 
Honestly at this point I am glad to partake in the beta events to help them smooth out whatever bumps are left on the road. Having more beta weekends = more feedback, stress tests, and much more.

I'd rather wait for a smoother launch and get the game when it's ready.
 
The amount of skill people showed in this game after a single weekend really impressed me. There were times where I'd lay down certain area traits, like fire rings or sanctuaries, and people would flock to them to do various combos and such. I think ANet nailed the skill effects. It was so easy to tell what people were using so that others could build off it.
 
As far as the melee vs ranged issue- I played a warrior to level 16 and in PVE I used a rifle 80% of the time. The decent increase in damage from using a great sword wasn't worth taking 300x the amount of damage. I ended up playing my warrior like a ranger because unless you're fighting 1v1 with a mob, you end up taking too much damage if you're in melee range.

But in structured PVP, melee can be amazing. So I think it's a simple PVE balance issue.
 
As far as the melee vs ranged issue- I played a warrior to level 16 and in PVE I used a rifle 80% of the time. The decent increase in damage from using a great sword wasn't worth taking 300x the amount of damage. I ended up playing my warrior like a ranger because unless you're fighting 1v1 with a mob, you end up taking too much damage if you're in melee range.

But in structured PVP, melee can be amazing. So I think it's a simple PVE balance issue.

Yeah, kind of noticed ranged is a lot easier to play in this game. Since there is no trinity you can't really rely on others to heal you making melee based classes somewhat more difficult in combat unless of course you're playing with people you know will keep you up rather than a group of randoms who don't care.
 
I'm sticking with July, possibly August.

I just don't see them going any further than that after they let us pre-purchase already.

Though my opinion depends entirely on how the next BWE is, performance (FPS) wise. The more BWE's that go by without noticeable improvements to performance the more worried I'll get.

If we get 2-3 BWE's in and there are little to no performance gains, who knows.
 
The last guess for a game release I made was for the long "delayed" Skullgirls. I predicted in like September that it would be out in March, I missed that guess by a hair.

I'll say GW2 will be out.... first week of August.
 
Ok, after rocking Mesmer for a day and a half and then jumping into WvW a few hours before the beta ended, I take back some of what I said about melee being a trap.

But I was right that you need to either have a lot of skills for it, or trait yourself for it, and the frustrating part came from using classes that start out without the skills and therefore need the traits for it more.

This video was posted earlier in the thread, and I'll repost here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhRxmobfOCo

Basically, Warriors have a lot of ways to dive into and out of melee without taking too much damage (in part because of their large armor). Guardians obviously have a lot too. Mesmers has 1-2 counter/block/evade skills on each of their weapons as well. Those three may end up being my favorite classes in the game after I've tried them all.

I still need to see how Thief does it, with all of their Shadow Step and stealth abilities, and the Necromancer, since they have Dark Shroud and extremely high health to make up for their armor deficiency.

I can't wait for the next beta.

Honestly, that video doesn't tell much. The enemies there are playing bad builds and/or are just bad players.

Higher toughness helps but in the end, it's not actually that big of a difference. A good offensive build still destroys you quickly.
 
I'm currently uploading several hundred screens to minus from the Charr, Human, Norn and Lion's Arch areas. A few WvW screens in there, too, though not too many. Tons of scenery shots.

I wish I would have stuck to the regular screen shots. The high res ones are nice, but I had to throw a few out because of glitches it introduces with water and the sun. The missing DOF makes some look worse than I remember, too.
 
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