I’ve spent this past weekend doing some additional exploration of the beautiful world of Guild Wars 2. This was my third and final BETA weekend participation. Now I just have to sit and wait impatiently for the game to launch next month. Very impatiently. I’m still enjoying SWTOR, but I’ve become charmed by GW2 and want to spend some time exploring all its new places.
I was excited that they gave us the ability to play Asura this time, as I had been looking forward to play the adorable wee creatures. I am, after all, a huge fan of the gnomes in World of Warcraft. The other big addition to this BETA weekend was the addition of the scenic vistas, most of which are accessible via platform jumping or scaling up vine-wrapped architectural supports.
I am not terribly good at figuring out the datacrons in odd places in SWTOR, but so far, I have been able to get to all the scenic vistas I’ve spotted on my map in GW2. Granted, I’ve not gotten past level 13 due to all my race and class jumping around so perhaps they ratchet the difficulties up a few notches as you get to higher levels. In addition to a small amount of XP, accessing a vista rewards you with a cutscene that is a sweeping view of the area your character can see from their vantage point.
My first weekend of playing I spent the bulk of my time on the Charr Mesmer you see above. Although fundamentally I don’t think Mesmer is the right class for me (as weapon swapping and dodging out of the way of damage is not something that comes naturally to me), I am a big fan of the beautiful Charr and will definitely be playing at least one of them through to the end of their story.
I recall being a little frustrated while playing the first two weekends with the difficulty in keeping my professions leveled up in synch with my character’s level. This was due in part to not having had much luck selling items in the auction house. This weekend on the other hand, I was able to offload many items in the auction house, and thus could afford to purchase the supplies I needed to level up artifice and tailoring on one character to 25 skill. While this didn’t quite mean that I was keeping up with my ability to make gear at my own level, I did still craft a piece or two for myself to wear, so overall I’m good with its progress. Additionally, it seems as though the quest rewards have possibly gone up a little bit. I am just not finding myself as cash strapped as I did in the earlier BETA weekends. And that is a very good thing!
I briefly played around with a Sylvari Ranger and was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed a ranger class for a change. I can’t say that I’ve had the best luck in the past with them, but in the name of trying out all my ranged options, I had rolled one this weekend. I like that GW2 makes it easier to manage your pet’s health — when they need healing they limp up to you so you can take care of them — no searching through a monster-infested bog to see where Mr. Whiskers expired!
I’m not sure I can say that the Sylvari grew on me (no pun intended.) It was nivec that Wrenz and I chose different options on character creation, so we were able to see two of the forms the character story can go depending upon some of the alignments chosen. But overall the plant people are just not sucking me in to their story. Perhaps they just take a little bit longer to charm you than the Asura and Charr.
Rather than starting a new blog to capture my Guild Wars 2 adventures, I think I’ll just work them in here. And once the World of Warcraft Mists od Pandaria expansion launches and I pop into that for a while, you’ll see that here as well. Hope to see you in game!
P.S. leave me your GW2 player name so I can add you to my friends list!
could you write up a total beginner orientation guide for swtor players like myself? when I tried this beta, I was completely lost, but I am still very eager to experience some of the defining features that compelled me to preorder the game (all roles to all players to enhance the pace & challenges in coop/pve)… I’m just at a start completely stupid as to how to try out different weapons and get into the different role tools my guardian class should have
That is definitely on my to do list! And I hope to entice some of the folks I know who played classes I did not to share their tips/tricks.
It should come as no surprise that I maxed out my five character slots while checking everything out this weekend. In fact, I also deleted and re-rolled one slot, so I made a total of six characters. It was my first and only Guild Wars 2 beta weekend and I had to check as much out as possible to decide if I wanted to buy the game.
My first character was a Sylvari Elementalist. Love the Elementalist. I think my favorite elements were fire and earth, using a staff. While I think it’s cool that your abilities change depending on what weapon you’re using, it also has some drawbacks (more on that later). As the first racial area that I explored, I really enjoyed it. Initially, it was difficult to find my character’s connection, but I really began to hate the Nightmare Court for what they were doing to corrupt the Sylvari. Also, it was beautiful there!
My second character was an Asura Thief. Asura as small, cute and a little on the creepy side. I’m not sure why, but their teeth scare me a little. Kind of like a Gizmo that hasn’t turned into a gremlin yet. I mostly got past that by the end of the weekend. I really liked my little thief. The dagger abilities were a lot of fun. I was using a dagger in my main hand and a pistol in the offhand for the first three levels. Then, just as I got a mainhand upgrade (a second pistol) I tried to go into my first instanced personal story and crashed to desktop. It was beta afterall. Unfortunately, the crash locked me down pretty hard on that character. Any time I tried to load her, I would get an error related to not finding the affected mission. I opened a ticket for her on my Sylvari and got to work on other characters. Late in the day on Sunday, I tried again and CS had bumped her out of the instance so I excitedly tried her again. And hated it. I didn’t like the abilities of the pistol/pistol combination nearly as much as the dagger/pistol abilities. It made me very sad since I had sold my nice dagger and I simply stopped having fun. Also, my husband had progressed on his Asura Elementalist and I didn’t want to make him come back with downgraded abilities just to help me out. So she was eventually deleted to make room for another character.
My third character was a Charr Warrior. I don’t think I got her past level two. She looked cool and what I remember of her abilities, they weren’t bad. I don’t know if it was just that it was late and I was tired or if I was just having a hard time getting into her story, but she just kind of stayed there.
My fourth character was a Human Ranger. I needed a character that had the highest potential of solo play because hubby was working with his dad for most of the weekend and I figured having a pet would help with that. I really liked both the human story as well as the ranger playstyle. She was only one of two characters that passed level 10 (not by much) and I liked being able to swap between her axes and her bow depending on which abilities I needed. This was one case where the differing weapon abilities was a good thing. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, the city and the surrounding environs. I also really wanted a chance to flirt with that Seraph leader. Yum. Alas, it was not to be.
My fifth character was a Norn Engineer. I really like the depth of the Norn area, even though I didn’t get her very far along. Not a huge fan of the Engineer, though. My preception of the Norn area visually and content in the first few levels, is that it felt like a combination of Dwarf, Tauren and Vrykul from WoW. The best parts of all three. Absolutely loved the hair options when customizing my girl.
Remember I said I deleted the Thief? I had to roll another character in her place. This time my Asura was a Guardian and she was a little more cute/less creepy than her predecessor. The Guardian doesn’t have as many damaging abilities, at least in the first few levels, so she felt more like a support character. Her survivability was really good though because she had great combinations of healing and defensive abilities, so it’s a profession I think I may try when it comes to release time.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game visually. The completionist in me loves being rewarded for completing all the things. The racial cities make me very happy because I can get them all in one go. The other areas are quite large. I have quite a few more thoughts regarding aspects of the game that are appealing and a few that are annoying, but I think that will need to be a blog post later. My wall of text is long enough.
TL&DR: I made a lot of characters, had fun on most, think the world is very pretty, and will buy the game to explore it all!
Fyn– glad this inspired you to write a post! And so very happy you two were able to be convinced to come out and play in the GW2 BETA weekend. Can’t wait to play in live with you!