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Guild Wars 2 Launch Date announced: August 28th, 2012

GW2's visual build seems to trade a lot of granular fidelity you'd expect from a top end PC game today, for really huge scope in the artwork and very explorable environments. Plus its real strength is the art direction and visual design.

I'll take its level of graphics if the performance is a bit more optimized by launch. I'm unsure if the builds for the current stress test are using the GPU much.
During BWE3 my gpu hit 95% @ 40fps. The last 3 stress tests I'm hitting 50-60% @60fps. With vsync off I can hit 80-90fps on max settings. GTX 570. Overclocking and NVIDIA beta drivers improved performance for me.
 
Posted this on the ANet forum... any other Rangers show weird keybind text for their pets?
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I think im done for the night. There is only just so much I can play when I know all my progress is going to go bye bye

On the plus side, I figured out my characters

Asura Engineer
Slyvari Ranger
Norn Guardian
Charr Warrior

Ill leave the 5th slot 'open' if a class gets some changes and becomes super fun. But yea, no casters for me it seems!

I kinda wanted Charr to be my third character, but Guardian really just didnt fit right with them, so Norn it is. THF was kinda fun, and I definitely liked their range abilities, but wasnt a fan of their melee weapons. Guardian felt a lot more satifsying in melee

What is rather odd is that no matter the graphical settings I put it at, I still got the same lag. I basically cranked it up to the max and enjoyed the pretty few. Though the constantly slight lag gave me a headache. Another reason why im calling it early
 
I found that decreasing water reflections one step down from All boosted my framerate from ~45 in certain locations to 60. Barely makes a visual difference, too.
 
I found that decreasing water reflections one step down from All boosted my framerate from ~45 in certain locations to 60. Barely makes a visual difference, too.

I'll have to keep this in mind. I run the game maxed at ~30 ish so if I can get a bump to 40 that would be nice.
 
You know what's neat? How the game can switch graphics settings in realtime without reloading the engine. Not only that, the FPS marker is built right in to the graphics options so you don't even have to close the menu to test your new settings.

Now I feel bad that I never bothered with Guild Wars 1. ArenaNet = good people
 
I found that decreasing water reflections one step down from All boosted my framerate from ~45 in certain locations to 60. Barely makes a visual difference, too.

Yeah, it's surprising how much difference the reflections setting makes in FPS. Even when turned all the way off, the water still looks good and a 15 FPS gain is very noticeable.
 
Because of the lag I decided to just mess around with character creation and taking screens 90% of the time I was on. Ended up with two characters I was really satisfied with. Graphics on a mix of low/medium settings unfortunately because my computer doesn't run the game very well at 1080p on my old processor/graphics card. I'm pretty happy with these two screenshots, though I wish I could have gotten my Charr in a slightly better pose. I wish I could keep the human female...

 
First time playing the game in the stress test, and have a few questions:

1) Was the amount of rubberbanding common during the BWE's as well, or was it just unique to these stress tests?

2) Can I drag and move that mini-map elsewhere? Didn't seem to be able to even though I could move most other windows. Coming from WoW, I think I got too used to the mini-map in the top right corner that it's a bit disorienting.

3) Is there a way to manually turn off auto attack? I don't mean permanently disable it, as I saw the option to do that. I mean once I start auto attacking, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn the auto-attack off until the mob is dead or I switch targets. I thought simply hitting the skill again would turn it off. Not really a big deal but I like having control over my character's actions.

4) Not a question, but I absolutely love jumping in this game, especially with Asura. :) I just can't stop bunnyhopping. Probably just a bad habit from back when I used to play a lot of TFC and original Counterstrike, but I love how jumping doesn't interrupt your auto attack.
 
Think I'm going to main a guardian. They might not have any range but their melee is plenty varied.

1) Was the amount of rubberbanding common during the BWE's as well, or was it just unique to these stress tests?

No, It happens occasionally but they usually get it fixed up. This was the first time where it was pretty much non stop for me and I've been playing since the first BWE. Though it seemed to only be in PVP for me. I went to queensdale and I didn't get any lag at all.
 
I picked a Thief. I went into WvW from level 1, immediately after the tutorial. As soon as I was in, I went to the vendor for a short bow, and then stuck to groups so I could kill lots of people. I had fun.
3) Is there a way to manually turn off auto attack? I don't mean permanently disable it, as I saw the option to do that. I mean once I start auto attacking, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn the auto-attack off until the mob is dead or I switch targets. I thought simply hitting the skill again would turn it off. Not really a big deal but I like having control over my character's actions.

For me, I managed to stop attacking by just twisting the camera and clicking on a random piece of terrain. Once I had no target, and wasn't facing directly at what I was targeting beforehand, the auto-target would just stop.
 
well that was a terrible experience lol fucking rubber band liked a motherfucker.

i couldnt for the life of me get my friend to play a match of pvp, how do you go in as a group into a match not the mists but the match.
 
Eww, gross.. MY sexy little mesmer wasnt one of those little gremlins, shes was a hot red head human.


Asura are weird, and people that like them are weird. They arent even funny like Lurikeens or Gnomes.
 
First time playing the game in the stress test, and have a few questions:

1) Was the amount of rubberbanding common during the BWE's as well, or was it just unique to these stress tests?

2) Can I drag and move that mini-map elsewhere? Didn't seem to be able to even though I could move most other windows. Coming from WoW, I think I got too used to the mini-map in the top right corner that it's a bit disorienting.

3) Is there a way to manually turn off auto attack? I don't mean permanently disable it, as I saw the option to do that. I mean once I start auto attacking, there doesn't seem to be a way to turn the auto-attack off until the mob is dead or I switch targets. I thought simply hitting the skill again would turn it off. Not really a big deal but I like having control over my character's actions.

4) Not a question, but I absolutely love jumping in this game, especially with Asura. :) I just can't stop bunnyhopping. Probably just a bad habit from back when I used to play a lot of TFC and original Counterstrike, but I love how jumping doesn't interrupt your auto attack.

1. There was some but not like this we had in the last hour, so they were doing it in purpose.

2. You can scale it but you can't move it.

3. I suppose you are talking about 1 skills, just do another skill and it should cancel the skill 1 chain. So if you go by the 2nd attack of the chain, if you press 2/3/4/5 then it will do that.
 
I asked this before but I'm not sure I got an answer. Did they get rid of the high res screenshot option? I looked and all I saw was regular res.
 
Some of my impressions here. Played some PvE as a Charr Mesmer. Then tried a bit of WvWvW with it, then lvl'ed up my thief from yesterday to 7 (unlock weapon swapping and played some WvWvW with that as well.

Llyranor: ok, mesmer is great, definitely sold
Llyranor: WvWvW starts to shine at lvl 7
Llyranor: you pretty have all your weapon skills by then, 1 utility slot, and weapon swapping
Llyranor: but yeah, yeah, WvWvW is amazing
Llyranor: we were defending an island
Llyranor: so they invaders made a marine invasion jumping from a bridge nearby, there were sieging us, and reinforcement couldn't go in because the main gate was in heavy enemy presence
Llyranor: i had to swim my way to the back to find a hidden entrance
Llyranor: then went up the walls to rain arrows down on them
Llyranor: eventually we fought them off, then did a counterattack
Llyranor: fought them back to the docks
Llyranor: they were in a full rout, some dropping like flies, others jumping into the water trying to swim to safety, we swam after them in an underwater chase
Llyranor: phew, fended them off, we went on, but since our gate leading to that island was broken, the enemy could easily come back
Llyranor: so we fought off another wave at the battlements of the main continent, on the bridge, through the water, back to the island fort
Llyranor: eventually, enough reinforcement came for us to repel them again
Llyranor: we pushed past the previous gate into their territory, where we had a big battle (20+v20+) in an open field, lots of back and forth
Llyranor: as the battle raged on, we realized another invasion was going on right next to us, at the risk of cutting off our escape route
Llyranor: fortunately, we managed to hold on enough to fortify our positions, and sent one group back
Llyranor: we were still on the offensive when the server stopped
Llyranor: awesome stuff
Llyranor: weapon swapping is essentially for WvWvW, otherwise you just feel too limited
Llyranor: there i was shooting arrows, area effects, etc
Llyranor: dying enemy, i switch to sword/dagger, teleport to him, kill, finish, another incoming enemy, cloak+sword=stealth, then i use the return teleport from the previous skill to get back to my lines
Llyranor: you can use teleport from one weapon group, switch to the other weapon, use skills, then swap back + return teleport from the same skill
Llyranor: given that i had two teleport skills that allowed this, i could dictate my position on the battlefield
Llyranor: tried to, anyway
Llyranor: i've been crippled/netted so many times
Llyranor: so many
Llyranor: and averted death with a teleport arrow, or a shadowstep away
Llyranor: when i'm on the ground, one of my skill is teleport corpse, so i warp away just as they do the finishing strike and miss, then my allies back me up
Llyranor: good stuff
Llyranor: mesmer is great, lots of skills that summon clones in different ways (swapping weapons gives a lot of clone variety), and different shatter skills based on the situation

I think I'll have 3 characters to begin with. Engineer (my main - not tried yet), Mesmer, Thief.
 
That hour I just had was nice. Didn't do anything I told myself I'd do but oh well.

I was more surprised that the generic looking great sword I had from BWE 3 turned into some sexy beast of a wide sword. Looking forward to them weapons.
 
Whoever trolled me- I forget who you were or if you were identifiable by screenname, but I'd like to thank you. I'll appreciate my plans extra hard this weekend.
 
Turns out the ISP who hosts ANet's datacenter was having issues tonight causing the lag so this wasn't even ANet's fault.
 
What shit. Every time I alt-tab it freezes my computer. Every other beta was fine.
this sometime worked for me (last betas) ,pressing ESC and minimizing(top right corner) the game is the only way the game does not freeze



I have no idea wth they did to the graphics, but in beta, BWE1, and BWE2, I had no graphical glitches at all. Now I get this in a TON of areas. It almost makes Rata Sum completely unable to be navigated with how jacked up it is in there:

I had this problem too >.< I wanted to do the asura jumping puzzle , gave up and decided to play pvp.
 
A few of us managed to stay on in Ashford Plains for 26 minutes after it was supposed to end, until booted. Alas.

Whoever trolled me- I forget who you were or if you were identifiable by screenname, but I'd like to thank you. I'll appreciate my plans extra hard this weekend.

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Turns out the ISP who hosts ANet's datacenter was having issues tonight causing the lag so this wasn't even ANet's fault.

all of us here at Anet would like to thank you all for your patience with the lag, our ISP took a shit and now to make things right will let you have the rest of the weekend to play, thank you.

yeah i know i need this in my body!!!!!!!!!!
 
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