A Guild Wars 2 reminder

[Akaimizu]

Not that I didn't see this coming. Considering when they got a million beta requests (when they opened up the question) within 24 hours of actually making the announcement. I was one of the million (though didn't win the raffle, so to speak).

It was highly likely that they'd run out of slots. Thus they redirected people to try to get it from stores where some pre-purchase beta slots are still available due to them being already allocated. Thus I pre-purchased the day they said the pre-purchase deal was available. I was worried they'd run out of online digital deluxe pre-purchase slots before the next afternoon.

[Akaimizu]

I'm on Tarnished Coast as a familiar character here.

Tynselle Nbareh. Not sure how we hook up.

[Neith]

All I can say is I hope ArenaNet listened to feedback... god only knows they needed it.

[Akaimizu]

True, but this is probably the first of open beta weekends. This game is still ways from a release and there's bound to be lots of bugs still. Plus, not all races are playable yet.

[-Ryuki-]

I'm upset because I never got hugely into GW1 (I loved the series, bought every collector's edition of all expansions) as I wanted to due to other MMOs taking up my time (like PSU, FFXI, etc), but I am seriously amped up for this.
I won't get cool milestones for linking my GW1 account like the millions who will when they play, but I'll at least still be able to enjoy the game with them.

[Freshellent]

So uh, I enjoyed myself.

Anyone else?

[Polly]

Friend of mine bought two copies and let me use one of his beta accounts.

I only got to play about 2 hours (or rather, I chose to only play about two hours, then went back to PSO 2) and the game ran like a massive case of the poops, despite me having a really good machine. It was fairly not optimized (I believe they said the game was bound strictly to the CPU) and nigh unplayable due to both the huge population bogging everything down and lack of optimization. Was kinda hoping for this to be what helped me decide to pull the trigger on the game or not, but it didn't really sway me either way. I realize it was a beta, so I can't really hold that much against the game yet, but not really being able to play at any kind of stable framerate and actually get anything done didn't convince me that it was something I needed to jump on just yet.

Hopefully the next beta weekend event will feature a client better optimized for actually playing.

[Palle]

Hey Ein, did you capture any footage of your time in the beta? I haven't touched the game yet, not sure if I want to dig through the tubes for decent videos.

[Freshellent]

If you want my real opinion, there won't be decent vids till next beta. All the current ones are sort of e-stroking or a lot of what we've seen before.

I did collect a tiny bit of footage, only because my computers hdd decided to eat the rest of it. So I promise I'll have something worthwhile next beta. So the answer is, nah, I got nothing. I'm sorry. Next time.

[Akaimizu]

Very true. I didn't have any real vid captures of the event, but I do have a few pictures.

All in all, it was an enjoyable event and it was definitely more informative playing it than looking at it. Particularly when it comes to how the events really work, how you build skills with weapon sets, and the general method of progression done in the game.

To a degree, it is nice how they kind of swapped the idea of simply grinding levels to ready yourself for your next main quest arc to jumping into events suited to carry your level forward. The events do make things more exciting and meaningful than just going around grinding mobs for loot and exp. As mentioned in some previous videos, a large part of swapping your build simply happens when you swap your weapons (this affects your first 5 skill slots). The rest is done in a similar case to GW1 where you select your class skills/spells/abilities (generally your last 5 skill slots).

They also have some interesting skills which are both Passive and Active. That is, they have some passive effect when you don't activate them, and while they aren't in cooldown; then they have an immediate effect that happens when you activate them but will revert to the passive effect once the cooldown is done.