Catching up on the April 15th update, and wow, ArenaNet is going big with this one. I love the wardrobe changes, in particular.
This mega server thing is quite interesting, as well. The dynamic event system definitely penalized you for running around alone in high level zones, which happen to be fairly lonely sometimes (on my server, anyway), and it seems ArenaNet decided to sacrifice some permanence to reinforce its basic functionality. I barely touched Guild Wars 1, but isn't this essentially trading the original "this is the world you occupy, and you can have a real impact on it" vision for something more resembling GW1's instances? In practice that vision may not be completely lost, but when the maps themselves are switching around according to some algorithm, what you do on those maps doesn't really seem as impactful, does it? The world itself is broken into a collection of pocket dimensions.
Still, even if it ends up working out that way, GW2 is a game that begs for a world that feels populated.
This mega server thing is quite interesting, as well. The dynamic event system definitely penalized you for running around alone in high level zones, which happen to be fairly lonely sometimes (on my server, anyway), and it seems ArenaNet decided to sacrifice some permanence to reinforce its basic functionality. I barely touched Guild Wars 1, but isn't this essentially trading the original "this is the world you occupy, and you can have a real impact on it" vision for something more resembling GW1's instances? In practice that vision may not be completely lost, but when the maps themselves are switching around according to some algorithm, what you do on those maps doesn't really seem as impactful, does it? The world itself is broken into a collection of pocket dimensions.
Still, even if it ends up working out that way, GW2 is a game that begs for a world that feels populated.