Yeah, yeah, more GW2 stuff, don't read if you don't wanna know. I'm not forcing it on anyone.
I was in the beta last weekend, so I've played the game now (happy Gang? ) and I can say that it was as awesome as I'd expected. The graphics are amazing, the game play is awesome and I couldn't find anything in the game that even slightly annoyed me. Unfortunately I couldn't play any content past level 30 (it isn't in the beta yet), and I didn't get the chance to play in a dungeon, but everything else was completely awesome.
Essay incoming:
The level scaling worked well, if I went into an area with level 9-11s, and I'm level 25, it would scale me down to ~10. Might sound annoying, but it kept the game interesting, since I couldn't 1shot everything I came across, and I could still die if I ****ed around.
The group scaling worked very well, too. If I'm doing an event on my own, it's quite fun, but when 50 other people showed up, it became epic. More mobs would spawn, and they'd be tougher, have more HP and new and stronger attacks, bosses would seem invincible and despite there being so many people, it's still easy to die if you're not paying attention.
The combat is quite intense, there's no standing there and getting hit; you'd die before you killed anything, especially as a caster. You have the ability to dodge, which is important, as well as interrupting, knocking back and buffing and debuffing. If someone dies, they get a new HP bar that slowly degenerates, as well as going down when they take damage. This is where ressing comes in. You can go up to them and start channeling a res that'll slowly fill up their hp, once it's full, they'll get up. However, you need to not die yourself while you're doing this, since you can't dodge or cast anything else. Also, their HP will fill up faster if more people come to help.
All professions (besides the Elementalist) can switch between two weapon sets in combat, which you'll want to be doing. You only have five skills bound to a weapon set, and if they're all on cooldown (except the 1 skill, which has no cooldown), then you'll want to switch so you're doing something other than spamming the same skill over and over. The weapon swap has a short cooldown of roughly 20sec, so you can't do it all the time.
Speaking of weapons; while playing a caster, I could equip a staff and stay the **** out of the way and cast spells, or, I could equip a pair of swords and go melee, and it was fine. The playstyle was different depending on the weapon I was using, and since I can switch between weapon sets, I could go from caster to melee in the middle of the fight, no problem.
The way you gain XP is quite interesting. As you discover things on the map, (waystones, points of interest, etc.) you'll get XP, when you participate in events, you'll get an amount of XP equal to your participation level (I'll explain that in a sec), but when you kill mobs, you barely get any. Sounds stupid, but it's really good, since power leveling can now **** off.
The events system works well. I've run past a farm before and had the "New Event Nearby" message pop up, only to see the farm is overrun with bandits. This isn't how it's supposed to be, so naturally, I'm meant to clear them all out. I get a number on my screen showing how many bandits there are, and it went down as other people were killing them. I didn't need a quest or anything, it was all happening and all I needed to do was dive into the fray.
This was a pretty small event. As I got higher level, and fewer people were around, I found towns that had enormous bosses in them. This was because the town had been taken over by Centaur, or whatever, and then those Centaur had called in lieutenants, those lieutenants had summoned bosses, and it had all been left because I was one of the only ones at this level. Now, while most events are soloable, when it gets to this level, it's not. With only one player in the event, the boss doesn't scale down to super-easy-mode so I can solo it. I called in everyone I could find in the zone and we took him down in an epic fight. The boss could do enough damage to almost one-shot me, so we had to dodge around a lot, support each other and res anyone that died.
If you leave an event before it's finished, or join a long time after it's started, or just stand around like a moron most of the time, then your participation level will be low. When the event ends, you'll be given XP, gold and Karma (I'll explain that later), depending on your reward. If you active pretty much the entire time, you'd get the gold reward, silver if you were there for most of it, and bronze if you came late or didn't do much of anything.
There are two currencies in the game, gold and Karma. Gold works as you'd expect. When you help someone by saving their farm, or escorting some traders (don't worry, they fight anything you attack or anything that attacks them, and if they die, you res them like you res players)
Threat doesn't exist like it does in other games. It's similar to GW1's threat, where you don't actually build a level of threat that you can maintain, instead, if the boss see's you first, then it'll be coming for you first. If someone becomes difficult to kill, then the boss won't waste its time, and it'll pick someone easier. This keeps you on your toes, since while you might be standing at the back doing awesome DPS for a few seconds, the next second the boss has charged you and you're dead. If an AoE has been placed down on you, you have enough time to dodge, or you die. If you see someone swinging their hammer down at you, you have just enough time to get out of the way, or you take the hit.
There are no healers. A lot of professions have a skill that will heal other nearby allies when it does damage to foes, but that healing is usually very minor. Everyone has a self-heal skill, which has a cooldown and doesn't heal for very much. There are times when you'll take damage (I've managed to solo elite-like mobs without taking any damage at all, so it's very possible to avoid it completely), and your self heal is there to mend that.
The armour in game is, besides well designed, quite simple and easy to understand. You have nine attributes in the game, and everyone has these same attributes.
The primary attributes are: Power, increases attack 1:1; Precision, increases crit; Toughness, increases armour 1:1 and Vitality, increases HP 1:10.
The offensive attributes are: Prowess, improves damage multiplier on crits; Malice, improves condition(debuff) damage and Expertise, improves condition duration.
The support attributes are: Concentration, improves boon(buff) duration and Compassion, improves outgoing healing, including the self heal (but dw, not by enough to make you a healer).
The primary attributes can be found on armour, and how you gear is up to you. If you can dodge a lot and avoid damage, then you'll not need as much defense, but if you're not very good at it, then you're going to need it. I was too low level to find armour that had many stats on it, but I found enough to play around a little.
Weapons are similar to armour.
The personal story wasn't as boring as some people had expected. While it was capped in the beta, I saw enough to get the gist of it. After creating your character, you begin your adventure (sounds lame, but whatever), and choices you make effect your story. You have your home instance which is cut off from the rest of the world, and you can **** it up as much as you like. I had a choice to save the city or to save my "best friend", and after I chose the city (that guy was retarded), he died, and never came back. If I chose ot save him, I dunno what would have happened. During character creation, **spoiler alert** I had one option where I said that I regret having not found the body of my lost sister. Turns out that as the story progressed, she was still alive, then I find that she's a POW and save her. Unfortunately it ended after that, with a message saying "Personal story will continue after release", so I don't know what happens next. **end of spoilers**
There are servers like there are in WoW, but migration is completely free (there's just a bit of a cooldown on them as far as I'm aware, I didn't look into it much). On top of that, you can join a guild on another server, and you can join multiple guilds. I didn't join more than one guild, so I can't say much about how that works. You gain influence from completing events, which your guild leader/officers spend on upgrades for the guild, but again, I didn't really look at it, so I can't say much.
There's a lot more I could say, but I'll stop here, it's a long enough read as it is. Overall, if you die, it's probably your own ****ing fault You don't pick up quests you just join in with what's happening, you don't need to form groups, you're automatically "grouped" with anyone around you, and the game is awesome. I, as well as everyone else I know that played, can't wait for the next beta.
I had offered to screen share during the beta, so everyone that wanted to could get a look at it, but apparently no one was interested. The offer still stands though, but I don't know when the next beta will be (will be some time during May). The beta will no doubt last as long as the last one and be during a weekend again (Friday 7pm - Monday 8am GMT). If you want to get the chance to see it, PM me on the forums and I'll see what I can do.
I had the pleasure of trying it during the BETA weekend as well. Had a blast, and can't wait for the next BETA either What server were you on? And what professions did you try out?
I tried out Mesmer (got to level 28), Ele (8), Thief (4) and Necro (2) and I was on Sorrow's Furnace US.
They're aiming for one beta per month, so the next one will be in a couple of weeks. I'll see you there, hopefully.
The combat playstyle is what really got me; ****ing loved it. Reminds me of some times in WoW when I got into a really sticky situation on my mage and barely made it, except that this game is designed for all the fights to be that way, so it keeps you on your toes. Fighting things that can usually one-shot you, or stun(knockdown) you for so long that you get battered to death get's your heart beating
Were you there at the end of the beta btw? When they gave us the critter event?
Edited by Joe on 02-05-2012 16:55
Ok. Didn't manage to play that much, had alot of RL stuff during that weekend but managed to try out ranger and thief. Was good fun, but wanna try out some more profs, during the next BETA. But no, wasn't there for the critter event. Sounds like fun tho Played on the EU Desolation server. Was good fun, and joined a guild that Im gonna join when the game goes LIVE. How come you played on the US server?
Some GW1 friends chose that server, so I joined them. No idea where I'll be going when the game goes live.
The critter event at the end was awesome, first, there was a badass level 25 champion level bunny that was strong enough to 1shot us, a few mins after that, balls of fire burst out of the ground in random places, and out of them came boss level black moas. This was in an area where we were scaled down to level 13, and the moas were level 19. Was good fun killing them, and we got points as we fought them, to compete against other servers with. My server managed about 450k, which was pretty decent since others were only reaching 150k, 300k, etc,. The point was to stress test the servers, as we had hundreds of people all crammed into one spot, and tbh, there was barely any lag, disconnects or framerate issues for me, so I'd say they held up pretty well.
Thing is, this event started at 7am GMT, so, a lot of people missed it. I took a ton of screenshots, only of the moa fights though..., here's one:
SHEN! Ive been trying to get hold of you! Even wrote you a priv message on the forums!
" I, I don't know why... But for some apparent reason, I can't stand women with sexy bodies. On a side note, flat-chested girls like you have absolutely no effect on me."
/Laharl, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
Whatever Joe has said, be truth! Consider my mind sploded after the 15 odd minutes i had playing a warrior on the beta. Shame i had some bitchin lag, it wouldve made the experience much, much better, but then again, i might be on the floor in seizures from the amount of awesome flooding my brain if it was
" I, I don't know why... But for some apparent reason, I can't stand women with sexy bodies. On a side note, flat-chested girls like you have absolutely no effect on me."
/Laharl, Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
I played Classic until I was nearly level 60. It needs The Burning Crusade really for me though. I am lurking around Daggerspine again for a while, trying to get used to the changes lol
3,451,136 unique visits 
) and I can say that it was as awesome as I'd expected. The graphics are amazing, the game play is awesome and I couldn't find anything in the game that even slightly annoyed me. Unfortunately I couldn't play any content past level 30 (it isn't in the beta yet), and I didn't get the chance to play in a dungeon, but everything else was completely awesome.
What server were you on? And what professions did you try out?
