It's funny, looking at all of my old screenshots from the BWEs. The world seemed so huge and full of promise. Two years and change later and I still see events I've never encountered before on a pretty frequent basis (less since the WvW Tourney started), screenshots of places I don't recognize or stumble into little areas that I hadn't noticed before. You think
That said, it also occurs to me that the folks ranting about the new player experience taking away some of the sense of exploration aren't entirely wrong (though they approach it from the absolutely worst angle). Tutorials are always rough, too much and you feel like you're being herded, too little and people get lost.
I wonder if that Island of Trials we keep seeing pop up in the Datamining threads is going to be some kind of tutorial. In my mind, it would be great to have players go through the initial story segment with all of their weapon skills unlocked to give them
a taste of power (tropes warning), then have the Island of Trails where you end up next to recover / train / whatever. The island itself could be a sort of mini-dungeon like the Font of Rand where it requires you to learn things to progress. As long as experienced players can skip it, I don't see a problem with it. It's learning in a safe, structured environment and it could spit you out into the real world with a few levels and a better sense of how the game works.
/shrug. I think the NPE took it a little too far, but it needed to change.
Stamina bar and buff placement, rounded map, lady bug... your story checks out.
The typeface they used in the BWEs looks so strange now too. It took a while to get used to the one they changed to for launch, but looking back at it now it's less legible. Not that they had much choice (from what I understand, there was a legal issue with the BWE typeface, though that could just be Internet speculation).
