Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Guild Wars 2 - First Impressions



As a Mesmer since the pre-purchase head-start launch, the urge to make a pun about being mesmerized by the game is near overwhelming at this point. So far, the Sylvari Mesmer has been a great deal of fun. The ability to send an illusionary greatsword flying at people satisfies some odd magical-warrior urge. I’ve played a little rogue and guardian as well, but so far that’s it. 
 
I tried not to touch on too many aspect of the game in the beta weekends, and intentionally left myself out of the last one as my plan since the first had been to roll a Sylvari Mesmer, and it would have been too tempting once the race was in. The concern here was as it always is with a beta; doing too much before release and everything having that done before feeling when you start for real.

Now that I’m actually playing, I’m not entirely sure it would have mattered.

I’m having a lot of fun here, even having only touched on the various aspects of the game. There’s certainly plenty to talk about, which is refreshing though it means I’ll have to measure my commentary out and try to focus on one area or another as I write.



PvP


I haven’t spent large amounts of time murdering people. Yet. The World vs. World vs. World aspect of the game is done fairly well. I like the feel of it, it reminds me a lot of the Realm vs. Realm in Warhammer Online, only rather than spread out across levels and with a small area in parallel to the levelling zones, in Guild Wars 2 it’s self contained. You could live in it if you wanted to, happily progressing while smashing down keep doors and firing cannons at anything red that moves.
 
WvWvW is far from revolutionary, but it’s polished. There’s a good amount of thought and care in the design, and I love that it’s three worlds battling it out and not just two. It makes the population discrepancies less punishing. If one world is clearly on top, they’ll end up split and fighting on two fronts. If the fights are even, any battle between two forces risks an ambush by a third. It remains to be seen how it’ll pan out in the long run, or if population can be a large enough issue that one realm can consistently crush and keep crushed two, but the initial impression is a good one.

And this doesn’t even touch on Structured PvP. You can leap into at any time, regardless of PvE levelling progress or gear. It puts you into a separate lobby, at level 80, with separate gear and PvP rank based levelling system.  It even cuts out some of the skills available in PvE that might be unbalanced in PvP. Though on first impressions, there may be some damage balancing there that needs to be done, though the entire process wants for time and testing more than anything else, first.

The warzones, battlegrounds, whatever you’d like to call them, are fun but a little too similar. I like control points based Conquest fights, but more variety would be nice. Of course, it should be a fairly simple addition post launch, and it gives the PvP crowd something to look forward to, along with the in-game tournaments that should be coming. And if PvP is your thing, but WvWvW is too random, hectic, or sieges are boring for you, you can live in Structured PvP. Or as a WoW guildy of mine would say, BGs WOO!



PvE


I like it. I share some of the concerns others have spoken out about in regards to the lack of traditional quests. So far, I’m not entirely sure how I’ll feel about it in the long run, but for now I like it. It adds a somewhat sandbox feel to the game. You can run around and do whatever you feel like doing. Oh hey, there’s an event over that hill you spotted while on your way to climb a mountainous vista jumping puzzle, stop by and participate. Or not, no big loss. The waypoints for fast travelling are amazing, too, even though I still find myself running around on foot exploring.

The scaling is also amazing. Want to go back and help out a low level friend? It’ll be easier, certainly, but your level and stat will be scaled down enough that some of the larger, boss-like event creatures may murder you if you just try to roll through it. It also makes visiting and exploring zones you’ve out-levelled feel more rewarding. As well as actually being able to gain levels, unlike in most other MMO’s in which you’d get virtually nothing out of it.


Crafting is fairly fun. The discovery system makes it more interesting, but it’s still fairly standard as far as MMO crafting goes. The addition of decent experience for gathering and production is nice. If the Trading Post was actually working, I’d have invested far more time and coin into crafts, I can say that much. But without an Auction House, the gathering can be slightly annoying, and selling anything you make is a pain.



Combat


It’s fun having skills based on weapons. Mixing and matching main-hands to off-hands or pairing a set of dual wielded weapons to a two hander via weapon swapping will keep theorycrafters entertained for a while. Once everything starts to get worked out, assuming it can be, Guild Wars 2’s combat may get as stale as any other MMO’s combat. Right now though? Don’t care at all, it’s awesome amounts of fun. On the rogue for example, running at someone with a bow or pistols, taking some shots, switching to daggers when you get up close and then, when the weapon swap combat timer finishes cooling down, cripple them and switch back to bow to propel yourself away. The combinations will get interesting, especially paired with the slotted class skills and trait bonuses.

 

RP, Guilds

 
The touches to the game that promote Role Play must be fairly received. Being able to dye your gear at any time in any colour you have access to is a very nice perk for everyone. That you have a switchable set of gear as town clothes, that’ll switch back automatically if you enter combat, is also useful for facilitating the more RP-inclined folk out there. I remember in beta there was issue with no chat bubbles for says, but they seem to have fixed that and stylized it nicely to fit the aesthetic.

Guilds are one aspect of the game I’ve barely touched, even less so than the few PvP matches and few hours in WvWvW I’ve spent so far. The upgrades look like they could be fun for it, but I imagine most large guilds have more concern in getting them built as each requires a crafting time and the queue for them is limited, rather than trouble gaining the influence that’s used to purchase them. It structured in a way that leaves it open to expansion in the future, at least, so I’d hope to see more guild upgrades available in content patches.




This is the most fun I’ve had in an MMO for a long, long time. I think maybe Rift was the last for me, though I only played that for a few months. And Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee, so there’s no barrier to return whenever I feel like it and no threat of wasted money if I ever want to stop playing for a while. The removal of even that tiny bit of financial pressure may well be part of the feeling of fun here, even with the world built in such a way that I can do whatever I like, whenever I like, with no negative consequences for the most part. Running through high level zones at level 10 looking for vistas is still a bad idea.

It’s going to be hard for future MMO’s to match this and justify charging a subscription. I still can’t decide if that’s a good thing or not, but that’s another rant entirely.



- ED

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