Guild Wars 2 Public Beta

[AlienIsGOD]

I was wondering if someone had a spare access key for this weekends beta I would really like to get in on the action and from what i have seen it looks amazing. PM me if you do have a key

[Phusius]

Don't have a key, I pre-ordered the game. Spent an hour so far in the beta, best game I have ever played hands down. Combat is really intuitive, graphics are jaw dropping for beta, story is great, MUSIC IS EFFIN EPIC AS HELL. Seriously never had music really make me feel more "in the moment" ever in a game....

[AlienIsGOD]

ya Jeremy Soule did a great job with the GW trilogy and EotN. Really enjoy this music over WoWs.

Also the dynamic events that I viewed on youtube looked amazing, considering the guy talking said it was one of the smaller dragons; but he talked of 20, 40, even 100 players participating. This has my hopes up as WoW has bored me since 2010 and Cata just doesnt do it for me atm.

[stinger608]

Damn!!!!! Makes me want to pre-order the game LOLOL

[W1zzard]

Originally Posted by stinger608

Damn!!!!! Makes me want to pre-order the game LOLOL

same here, but "weekend beta" sounds quite limited

The first BWE is currently planned for late April, and we expect to have one every month or so. The schedule is subject to change and will be confirmed at a later date. Currently, we do not know how many of these events we will have.

[Cold Storm]

I'll wait for the game to come out.. how much I want to play it... I can wait...

[johnnyfiive]

Originally Posted by Phusius

Don't have a key, I pre-ordered the game. Spent an hour so far in the beta, best game I have ever played hands down. ....

[WhiteNoise]

The first GW was Epic! This looks like it will stomp all over the first one. I can't wait to get in and play tonight after work.

[random]

Too bad I've already pre ordered Tera but gw2 release isn't until sometime after will get enough time to judge both games ,

[1Kurgan1]

I only got to login and make my character so far, will try more after I get off work. But what I thought watching the videos and now making my character. Lots of the textures are horribly lacking detail, even by MMO standards. Hopefully the games a lot of fun, will see in another 6 - 7 hours.

[NinkobEi]

Unable to log in. wonder what the dealio is

edit: ah, maintenance.

[lemode]

this is the MMO i've been waiting for. good and more important, meaningful open world PvP.

[xenocide]

Originally Posted by lemode

this is the MMO i've been waiting for. good and more important, meaningful open world PvP.

People always find a way to trivialize World PvP, I guarantee by the end of the first month GW2 World PvP will be stacked as shit and people will be complaining about it. I read up on their "fool-proof" WvWvW system and can already explain where it wil fail. Certain servers with better players will dominate the first round, then all the players on one of the servers who want to win the upcoming round will transfer to those servers. It will get to the point where one server just has better players than the others, and will win every match up. And if the server gets filled because of all the transfers, people while bitch and complain about there not being more room.

The problem with effective World PvP is not the companies doing it, it's the players. Look at SWTOR, Ilum was a great concept, but people were the problem. When each server had 4-5 Empire Players per Republic Player, it stopped being a true PvP zone and people just started trading points since the end justified the means.

[1Kurgan1]

I wouldn't really call that Open World PvP as you need to enter basically into an instance. It seemed pretty fun when I entered there, but maybe the moment I felt the least epic in an MMO ever, didn't feel like 1 person mattered too much.

Got some more time with the game today. It was ok, had some fun with friends, got to try out some new weapons, more pve, and more pvp. The animations and general gameplay remind me of an Asian type MMO, or something like Aion, I'm not a huge fan of that, but without a monthly fee I can probably deal with it. The world PvE and instanced PvP locations seemed to be lacking inspiration. But the main towns for the races, those do look amazing, if the rest of the world looked like that I would be sold.

[NinkobEi]

Maybe its just me, but my necromancer doesn't feel very necro-ish. I can ranged auto attack with a staff and dish out semi-decent aoe damage with minor healing, or I can auto attack throwing axes with one burst ability and a dmg debuff. of course I am more accustomed to the EQ necromancer, and this is certainly way off base from that.

[xenocide]

Originally Posted by NinkobEi

Maybe its just me, but my necromancer doesn't feel very necro-ish. I can ranged auto attack with a staff and dish out semi-decent aoe damage with minor healing, or I can auto attack throwing axes with one burst ability and a dmg debuff. of course I am more accustomed to the EQ necromancer, and this is certainly way off base from that.

Just watched a gameplay video, kind of a weird interpretation of a Necromancer. It seemed more like a Warlock-type class from WoW. I was also confused by the fact that the pet the guy had was a beholder-esque creature, and not some variation of skeleton as a Necromancer should have.

[epicfail]

ive tried necro, ele, and mes in pvp up to now.
the mes doesnt really seem to be my type

but i do really like the ele so much different play types with the 4 dif elements you can use.
and then necro is lots of fun but doesnt really use minions to much other than the elite skill and using it to gain health back.

[WhiteNoise]

I got a lot of time in over the weekend and I'm well impressed with this game. It's way more MMO than GW1 was and plays very well. Visually the game is very appealing to me and the music score is quite nice. NPC characters/creatures are varied and done well. I don't know what else to say. The game ran beautifully on my comp with zero lag. Not bad at all for a beta. It's been a long time since an MMO excited me this much.

I didn't try all of the classes but I did play a Guardian to L12, Elemental to L2, Necro to L5, and Engineer to L5.

Of those classes I wanted to love the Guardian (as this was my choice for main going in) but the damage output is on the weak side though that class does solo well.

The Elemental I didn't play enough but from what I did play I can tell it will be a major dmg dealer. The Necro was actually one of the more fun classes to play but though it deals good dmg; it is way too squishy for me. That will be one of my Alts though.

Now the real shock for me was just how much fun it was to play the Engineer class. Now considering I really dislike firearms in my fantasy games this is one class I was actually sad when i read they created for the game. Just for shits and giggles though I tried it and I'll be a son-of-gun I had a blast! (No pun intended) I think this just might be the most fun class I played all weekend.

Next beta weekend I will play the Engineer class the most to get a better feel for it. I'd like to spend more time with the elemental as well.

All in all a great beta weekend!

[catnipkiller]

I played the beta this weekend and i get less fps with 2 cards then with one. The game only runs off one core so i run into the same problrms with lag that rift gave me. This makes me want to try tera online as my friend told me it runs off more then one core.

[WhiteNoise]

Originally Posted by catnipkiller

I played the beta this weekend and i get less fps with 2 cards then with one. The game only runs off one core so i run into the same problrms with lag that rift gave me. This makes me want to try tera online as my friend told me it runs off more then one core.

I heard a few people complain about this but from my view point I can't say anything but good things. The game ran so silky smooth for me that I was in shock.

It only used one cpu core? I didn't even know that. I guess one core at 4.7GHz is enough then for the beta. I ran two cards in crossfire too and again I never experienced any lag or indication that my crossfire was holding the game back. Quite the opposite actually.

The game maxed out with it's in-game video options ran beautifully @ 1920x1080.

[NinkobEi]

The game really needed the latest ATI drivers. Upgrading from 12.3 to 12.4 made such a huge difference.

I'm surprised at how long it takes to get from level 1-10 in this game. I mean, most others its maybe an hour or two. This game its a full 4-5 hours even if you know what you are doing.

The XP from exploring actually makes it worth doing. Traveling to a new area can easily grant half a level if you visit a bunch of the waypoints, which is really neat.

My initial impressions are that the classes have a lot of kinks to iron out to make them more fun. A lot of core abilities (see: mesmer-illusions, necromancer-pets) feel very weak compared to other classes'.

I'm probably one of the few who are "on the fence" about the whole weapon swapping thing. It just seems like a hassle to have to swap them all the time. Granted, it does cut down majorly on the amount of hotkeys you need, but it feels unnatural. I mean, I just don't see a necromancer swapping from an axe and a warhorn to a staff mid-fight. For a hybrid class like the ranger it makes sense. Just not other classes.

[1Kurgan1]

Originally Posted by WhiteNoise

I heard a few people complain about this but from my view point I can't say anything but good things. The game ran so silky smooth for me that I was in shock.

It only used one cpu core? I didn't even know that. I guess one core at 4.7GHz is enough then for the beta. I ran two cards in crossfire too and again I never experienced any lag or indication that my crossfire was holding the game back. Quite the opposite actually.

The game maxed out with it's in-game video options ran beautifully @ 1920x1080.

Me with a 5ghz 2600k and heavily oc'd 7970 the game felt smooth, but checking with fraps showed lower frames than I expected, in the Charr zone at the lake with like 50 people around I was down to 15 fps, otherwise I hovered 35 - 45. I only ended up checking because my friend running a 1090T and a GTX 470 said he was getting choppy frames (my frames did drop but I never seen any chop even at 15 fps), and his roomate with a q6600 and 9800 gtx was also getting fps issues. Friend with 470 was running maxed at 1920x1080, guy with 9800 was not running max.

So 3 very different hardware setups all with fps issues. And my setup + my friend with the 470 are both beyond what most people who aren't techy's have.

[WhiteNoise]

I should have used fraps myself. I will at the next beta weekend.

As for drivers I can't use anything over 12.1 due to some crazy problems they cause my PC. I played the beta with 12.1 drivers with no issues to speak of.

[korhal]

I spent 21hrs on the beta, gw2 is living up to all its expectations.
@1kurgan1, the game is not optimized yet. Also they said that over clocking lowered performance at the moment. Pluss the game is CPU bound right now. Also the a me is not set up for ATI yet.

[korhal]

Originally Posted by xenocide

People always find a way to trivialize World PvP, I guarantee by the end of the first month GW2 World PvP will be stacked as shit and people will be complaining about it. I read up on their "fool-proof" WvWvW system and can already explain where it wil fail. Certain servers with better players will dominate the first round, then all the players on one of the servers who want to win the upcoming round will transfer to those servers. It will get to the point where one server just has better players than the others, and will win every match up. And if the server gets filled because of all the transfers, people while bitch and complain about there not being more room.

The problem with effective World PvP is not the companies doing it, it's the players. Look at SWTOR, Ilum was a great concept, but people were the problem. When each server had 4-5 Empire Players per Republic Player, it stopped being a true PvP zone and people just started trading points since the end justified the means.

You have to pay money to transfer servers.