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Guild Wars 2 Release Date Announced
New submitter Woldry writes "After five years in development, Guild Wars 2 has been given a launch date: August 28, 2012. ArenaNet's aim is to provide 'a living, breathing online world that challenges convention, that's designed for fun instead of grind.' There's a beta weekend planned for July 20-22 for those who have pre-purchased the game (and for those who have gotten legitimate beta keys in advance)."
Rock, Paper, Shotgun has a good write-up of some hands-on time during one of the earlier beta weekends, saying, 'Time after time, Guild Wars 2 impressed me with just how carefully no, how smartly everything has been thought out. Those things that annoy us in other games are simply banished here.'
Unlike WoW, when this game sucks my boyfriend in, I'll actually be there playing with him. :D
I have the hiccups.
I'm serious.
i've played in all beta events and it's seriously dampened my willingness to play any others in the RPG genre.
i've almost a 20 year history with RPG computer gaming and this is the one I (and lots of others) have been waiting for.
"Those things that annoy us in other games are simply banished here."
There are no other people?
Those things that annoy us in other games are simply banished here..
What are they to you ? that wasn't mentioned and I'm curious to know what they are
Those things that annoy us in other games are simply banished here..
What are they to you ? that wasn't mentioned and I'm curious to know what they are
I stopped reading after he mentioned that there was no concept of a Mana pool for spells, just cooldown timers. I was actually looking forward to this game, but not any more.
What do you want to bet the long awaited release date for WoW: Mists Of Pandaria is announced in the next week? Wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being pretty close to the GW2 date.
I started seeing excitement about this late 2011, as Guild Wars 2 started to do its road show, demoing it at various conferences. There was a lot of hype behind GW2, but when they did their first Beta Weekend Event, it really blew me away.
ArenaNet was smart and didn't show the game off to people (in beta form) until they felt it was really ready to show to the public. Their beta wasn't a place to test it while it was still alpha quality. Their beta events were there for people to experience the game, stress the servers, and test some of the more detailed mechanics that needed work.
Even in the beta events, it's a well polished game with very few rough edges. All the classes feel unique, and have a lot of different play styles available to them (depending on how you equip/spec your character). It's really hard to describe a large MMO in just a few words (as there is so much content), but it is really worth giving it a try if you like MMOs.
The biggest selling point that I've been using with friends is how they split up PvP. In the PvE (player vs environment/enemies), there is no fighting other players (pvp, player vs player). When I run around the PvE world, it is really one of the first games where I will help out random people. They did a great job to guide you into helping others. It really helps build a feeling of community within the PvE adventure.
For PvP, it's all in an instanced area. So you never fight against people in the PvE world. They have 2 PvP modes. One is a battleground style PvP (much like they have in World of Warcraft with battlegrounds). These are quite fun. But then they have a persistant PvP zone (a massive zone at that), where 3 servers fight against each other for control of the areas. For people that played DAoC (dark age of Camelot), it feels much like the RvR in that.
The story and lore of the universe is quite fun (I started reading up on GW1 lore, it's a pretty decent fantasy story). But it doesn't get too much in the way for people that don't want to take part in it.
Its not what it is, its something else.
After Guild Wars 2 releases, the fun and addictive gameplay will lead people to quit working, eating and sleeping in order to play it.
At least we'll die having fun.
Perhaps my biggest annoyance with the game so far is combat. In so much as your attacks will execute, animations and all, even when your not in range of your target. This leads to it looking like shadow boxing.
Shadow boxing is that old nemesis of immersion, it is when your and your opponents moves do not synch up. When neither seems to respond to the other. WOW for all its faults does not suffer this.
Another combat issue is their world and event bosses then to be zerg fests. Its fun once or twice but after awhile your buried under rendered effects without any real organization. I am sure groups will eventually organize for these but with the come one come all its not bound to be anything but the zerg fest.
The abilities system where each weapon provides different abilities will lose its luster once the players settle on whats best and there is always a whats best is such flexible games.
So a very pretty world with a great new take on cut scenes art and distance drawing. The voice acted dialog is very stiff and cheesy for the most part, again the actors don't seem to be talking to each other - they instead are talking to a fixed point in the distance. Gee, just like combat.
I haven't found an open world with this ease of traveling that looked fun to just explore since Asheron's Call.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Ok, GW2 is innovative, everyone says its fun and shine. But what do I have to do once I am level 80?
Can someone explain that to me? Once you hit 80 it becames WoW/SWTOR/RIFT/Whatever that the only thing you can do is PvP/PvE?
You should try it before judging.
From a game design stand-point, a mana system is fundamentally a way to prevent players from activating too many skills too quickly...which is the same thing that cooldown timers do. However, cooldown timers don't force players to channel funds into a gold sink like mana potions, or waste inventory slots to carry them. Having played many games with mana pools, I find the cooldown system in GW2 to be vastly superior.
Obviously, those players that really enjoy buying, carrying and quaffing mana potions may disagree.
I stopped reading after he mentioned that there was no concept of a Mana pool for spells, just cooldown timers. I was actually looking forward to this game, but not any more.
Why? I played casters in most MMO's since the original Everquest, and the mana pool was simply another form of cooldown timer. You needed to manage your casting rate, your regen rate, your meditation (when it was a factor), etc. against the size of your mana pool. The only thing that a mana pool actually allows that this wouldn't is the quick burn and I'd be surprised if they didn't put some kind of special ability or skill that would allow that, too.
Boy, if only we'd just gotten a plain old Public Option like every other civilized country in the fucking world, but no, conservatives didn't want that, so now they're getting fed this shit sandwich. I find it hard to sympathize...
He writes, "Here's what would have gone through your mind if you were a monster in my way..."
No. Here's what: "Why am I so weak, slow, and stupid? Why do I attack once per 10 seconds? Why am I attacking a guy with metal armor who stuck out his tongue but holds a wiffle bat when there's this naked guy who holds a flamethrower right there burning me? And why did I put a lizard gizzard in my pocker?"
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Not usually an MMO kind of guy, but the more I read about GW2, the more I think I actually have cause to finally upgrade/replace my 4 year old gaming rig... funding, however, is a different matter.
Speaking of which, anybody want to buy some blood? Like, lots of it?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I hope it breaks every sales record.
If you want read good primer on Guild Wars 2, I would recommend checking this page: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1058358-Guild-Wars-2-Mass-info-for-the-uninitiated-READ-ME!
Lack of mana pool removes some of the complexity and resource management. Without the mana pool it just becomes "click this button as soon as your cooldown timer clears." Combine that with some of the other things they mentioned, like every class getting a healing spell, makes ever character feel the same. If everyone has the same basic abilities that just differ in the animation they play, whats the point? There is also GW's signature skill system where skills can be swapped out at any time, which always left me without a feeling of progression, and makes every character feel even more alike. Taken individually these aren't a big deal, but combine them all and it just leaves me feeling all "meh" about the game.
I'll certainly take another look at the game once it's actually released, but reading this guys story just destroyed a lot of my interest.
If you activate skills the moment they cooldown, you will fail hard in this game. If anything, the cooldown system in GW2 actually requires more resource management to know when to best activate skills. Of all the RPGs I've played, I think GW2's skill system might be one of the easier ones to begin learning, but one of the hardest to master. In other words, it manages to appeal to both casual and hardcore gamers, which is no small feat.
Also, each class plays distinctly differently. Abilities and play styles are very different between them. The fact each one has a heal skill doesn't alter this. Most heal skills have long cool downs, so you need to really stay alert and use them when you need them the most.
As for the original GW's skill system, GW2's version is significantly different. You can still respec your character in GW2, but there are some costs to do certain kinds of changes.
It also renders fireball-spam a less viable strategy, forcing players to really think strategically about their spell choices and combinations.
Try the ele with air (lightning) magic. That first skill once fires keeps on firing constantly until you move out of range or what you are fighting dies. Or you die. You can also fire other skills while the first one fire is still going. I really thought it was cheating it was that simple and fun.
*note they may have changed this. I have not tried the beta in a few months
The best thing Obama could have hoped for would be that Obamacare would be tossed out. Now the Republicans are outraged and far more motivated to turn out and vote.
Fortunately in GW2 every class has a heal spell and resurrection only costs a few copper pieces when you die, so health care isn't a big issue there.
Ooh improved force lightning...
What you call civilized I call bankrupt and underwater. In that regard the US is close to being civilized too. It isn't just the "conservatives" that didn't want it ... the MAJORITY of the ENTIRE country didn't want it. Congress had to pass it by trickery against the wishes of the people. The only winners here believe in a socialist America.
Does GW2 have 100% spoken dialogs?
Ever since I played SWTOR, I no longer care for a story that's presented in text form (like most current MMOs and computer RPGs from the 80s/90s. Between countless hours of Mass Effect 3 (when my wifi didn't wanna play nice) and SWTOR, no matter how good the story is, I just don't care if it isn't 100% spoken dialog (hello, Dragon Age).
If I want to read a great story, I'll grab a book. I own over 20 dead-tree books that I man to start reading eventually (not to mention over 100 e-books), and my eyes can definitely use some time away from the PC screen after a full workday.
So, unless an MMO wants to become the next Korean fetching grindfest (hello, Tera Online) my next MMO will need to have spoken dialog to draw me in. Sorry, SWTOR may have been a lame WoW clone after all is said and done, but it pushed the envelope in MMO storytelling, a new bechmark by which all future MMOs will be measured.
Lack of mana pool removes some of the complexity and resource management. Without the mana pool it just becomes "click this button as soon as your cooldown timer clears."
Maybe if you're playing a mana-pool-oriented game onto which some misguided developer shoddily stapled a cooldown-timer-oriented magic system, sure. But as soon as the fights become more involved than just "DPS this thing to death before it DPSes you to death, oh and sometimes cast a buff so you can DPS more or so that the thing DPSes less, and maybe bring more people in to increase DPS so your DPS can DPS and DPS DPS DPS DPS", things change QUITE a bit.
You also have the serious problem of, say, one ele causing constant AoE knockdown (aka knocklock) and another doing constant AoE damage. Without a timer, the first ele can dedicate their mana to just doing AoE knockdowns and counting for casting time. The only fix for this would be to increase casting time to be greater than knockdown time, and then you get 2 or 3 people working together over Vent or TS (or Skype or whatever) doing the exact same thing and just counting out loud and knowing the order. This is ruinous for PvP and breaks PvE. So the enemy player takes and anti-knockdown skill? Well gee, Meteor took 1 skill on the bar, so the rest of the bar can be dedicated to spiking that one player down. And I'm talking about a single tactic - there are hundreds more.
Guild Wars 1 realized that and added a cooldown timer in addition to mana; Guild Wars 2 did away with the mana as superfluous.
They make you pay taxes if you own property, free and clear. And they make you pay taxes until you die. They can tax whatever they want, and they do. Don't make act like there aren't already "questionable" tax laws.
Yes there is a quick burn for elementalists and thieves (initiative, which actually works pretty much exactly like mana). Mesmer isn't fully realized, so we'll have to wait and see, but you may be able to do it with a weapon swap, which I haven't unlocked yet on my mesmer. For elementalists, you can burn your entire fire bar, then switch elements to, say air (F3 key) and burn that bar, switch back to fire (F1 key), etc. For defense with less offense or snaring use the Earth and Water bars (these are all tied to weapon - you also get some skills to use, but most of these have long cooldowns on ele). Usually by the time you've spammed a bar from a different element, you can switch back to the original (there is a timer on switching back, but it is like 10-15 seconds) and it is mostly or fully filled. Effectively, an ele has 25 elemental skills available to spam and up to 5 extra skills without a weapon swap (and once you unlock that, you have 20 more). I didn't really get into weapon swapping yet on ele, but I do it all the time on thief (pistol the enemy until they're close, then switch to daggers, but the initiative bar can hamper there).
Good. A well-coordinated team should be rewarded.
Elementalists do not have a weapon swap, due to their attunement mechanic. 4 attunements with 5 skills apiece = 20 skills, compared to standard classes who just have a weapon swap with 5 skills apiece for 10 skills. If eles also had a weapon swap, they'd have 40 weapon skills which would be obviously overpowered.
The difference in GW2 is that there are very few spells that just do pure damage. Most have secondary and sometimes very powerful effects attached to them, which means you will want to use them wisely and not just "as soon as your cooldown timer clears".
For example, one spell may have a blind effect which causes your enemy's next attack to miss. Another may have a knockdown effect. Another might launch you forward while leaving a trail of fire in your wake. Hopefully it's obvious how this forces smart use of skills and not just whack-a-mole whatever's off cooldown.
As a side note, I find mana to be a very bad resource system (large pool, slow/cumbersome to regenerate) and it seems to have stuck around only because it's "traditional". It is essentially unlimited in the short-term, and has a hard limit in the long-term, which means that in the heat of battle, you might as well not have a resource unless you are engaged in very long fights. And if you do run out of mana, it's a very unfun mechanic since there's basically nothing you can do except sit there and reflect on your character's poor life decisions that led to this point.
Energy (small pool, fast-regenerating resource) seems like a much more interesting resource for forcing resource management, as it forces smart, controlled skill usage and heavily prohibits button mashing. However, a purely cooldown based system like GW2 basically creates the same thing.
The difference is...
Federal government effects the whole country, you have to move to another country to avoid the laws.
State government ( which is where these decisions should be made in the first place) only effects the residents of that state. If you dont like the state laws, move to a state that has laws that you can agree with.
This is the basic problem with the Federal Government making all these mandates. If they mandate that every citizen of the US is required to buy (fill in the blank here) then we will all be required to purchase states item, the federal government has taken our freedom of choice. Welcome to the new Republic of Communist America.
Will there be an open beta for us to try it?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
company not listening to advice from gamers who test their game. All the problems with GW2 are things that gamers would WANT in the game.
All the polls I've read have shown overwhelming support for a public option. Then again, they probably asked poor people, and Lord knows they don't deserve an opinion, am I right?
No Mac version, no sale.
It takes more than "I'll spam this spell, you spam that one" to make a well-coordinated team.
Man, and here I expected to read a nice, distracting, article about a good looking game... Nope, more political bullshit handwavy crap.
I don't care anymore. The government can do whatever it wants to, or doesn't want to... I don't give a shit. My life will go on. What the hell does getting my panties in a bunch (on Slashdot, nonetheless) DO? Nothing. The people who agree with you will feel a nice and justified, the people who disagree with you will ignore you and keep believing in whatever they want. Meanwhile you waste a bunch of other people's time, and work yourself up over pretty much nothing at all.
On one hand, yes, Obamacare is dumb (the manditory part), but now it seems dumb but legal. Tough, now go vote for corrupt bastards who blow smoke up your ass, and hope they actually do something about it. Sadly, the dumb part supports a very nice part (poor people getting health insurance, and stopping insurance companies from fucking everyone for money). Oh well. Accept the good with the dumb, or throw the whole thing out... Who fucking cares? Really? Oh yeah, I know you do. Good. Now shut the fuck up and vote for people, or... if you must open your mouth, say something reasonable, and be respectful. If you can't do that, go die in a fire.
That said. I can't wait for GW2, its going to be awesome. While I don't hate Diablo 3 as much as the internet tells me I should, it really isn't as satisfying over a long period as it could be... Hopefully Guild Wars actually lives up to its reputation. I really enjoyed the two beta events I could participate in, but who knows, I never got high enough level to really see what develops, and didn't really delve into the world versus world versus world stuff (well, I died a few times). I'd like to see where they go with it.
I'm also curious where they're going to go with their micro-transactions... So far I'm intrigued, but it could go wrong rather quickly. I just hope they either have more character slots, or sell them very cheaply.
Sorry for ruining your silly off-topic political circle jerk.
(you is rhetorical, and not necessarily aimed at the parent)
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
I've been playing the PoE beta for awhile now and it just doesn't grab me. I like what they did, I like the atmosphere, the skill and attribute systems are interesting and fun for the most part. There still is something off about it... I'm not a big fan of the item economy, the classes are rather pointless feeling, and zones are a bit meh. The combat is bog-standard ARPG combat. And the "multiplayer" bit is a bit lame feeling, or at least terribly lonely. And it doesn't rectify the "I can't play on the train" problem at everyone complained about in Diablo 3. I'm not saying its a bad game, it just isn't a great game. But then again it is free, so... Standards be damned, I am getting my moneys worth.
Now, Torchlight 2 is going to be epic, especially if they fixed the skill trees... And Grim Dawn is going to be awesome, I actually liked Titan Quest more than Diablo 2 on pretty much everything but aesthetics and atmosphere (fear Dio, the Dream Warrior!). That said, Diablo 3, for all the flaws and hate, is still a damn good game, and is stiff competition for all of these titles. And you really can't say it isn't hard, when the forums are full of people bitching about it being too hard.
GW2, though, isn't really competition. It competes with WoW and SWoToR more than any of the upcoming ARPGs. I pretty much forgot about PoE the second I got into the Torchlight beta, as well as on every GW2 beta weekend. It really doesn't hold up next to these behomoths. That isn't, again, saying it is bad, just the competition is awesome.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
To be honest, I'm somewhat sad to see this go as well. It all comes down to management and sacrifice. Playing an Monk in the original Guild Wars, nothing was more exciting then being strained to switch to your high mana set (at the cost of mana regeneration) and having your team just barely survive the encounter. Swapping weapon sets to hide your mana from Energy Burn mesmers, keeping everyone's positioning in mind, knowing who to prot (much more effective then heal), and managing a skill bar of 8 that not only had to be able to deal with the wide variety of enemy compositions while maintaining survivability, mana and cooldown management, and positioning was the majority of the fun playing a support class.
I fully expect GW2 to be a great game, but think they are missing some key things that made the original great. Here's to hoping they bring back actual GvG
Grid based combat, then you can match units up, especially in a multiplayer game. With free movement just doesn't allow proper martial arts. The Sims 3 shows this to an astonishing degree, its martial art combat is the most realistically animated because the characters are precisely placed so the animators can completely put them in sync.
Anything else, and it just don't work. Age of Conan showed this with its kill moves, lots of sidestepping to get the "actors" in position, large humans even shrinking on cue to fit the animation.
Far far easier to go the Korean route and just have swords hurling wind or whatever and never bothering about things making sense let alone matching up animations.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Since it didn't require a monthly subscription, Guild Wars appealed to a lot of gamers outside the hardcore realm, with a model that let people play for a while and then set it aside. That was, in my opinion, one of its great strengths, as I've been one of those players. There were times when I had loads of time to play, and times when I was only on during holiday weekends. Unfortunately, that angle--the leave and return model--while one of the game's strengths may hurt them as Guild Wars 2 *finally* gets released.
Why? Some of those occasional players may have lost their enthusiasm about the game. During the first two years of development, I was excited for the release and confident I would play. As the years have dragged on, I've still been excited to see the development news, but it has become something less and less exciting to me. I worked hard to fill my Hall of Monuments in Guild Wars (an in-game feature that would allow certain achievements to pay out in the new Guild Wars 2 environment), but now find myself only marginally interested. I planned to buy the pre-release during the early years of development, but took a pass when it became available earlier this year. One of my sons got in, and has been enjoying beta weekends and stress test events, but I'm starting to wonder if I'll even bother buying the game (especially since I'll need to replace my laptop if I want to continue using it for my gaming).
Sure, these are just my musings, but I get the sense that I'm not the only one out there who may have lost interest when the development took so long. I'm sure many of you have been waiting with bated breath and can't imagine not playing, but all I can muster for now is, "Meh."
Don't get me wrong--it looks amazing and my son has been having a lot of fun. It's just that those of us on the periphery of the gaming scene see our interests wax and wane. Perhaps I'll change my tune when others I know start playing--if they start playing at all. For me, rather than playing Guild Wars 2 on Friday nights, I'll probably continue playing MTG at the card shop in the next town--it's a lot of fun, too, and I'm meeting more interesting people that way, too.
Anyway, point made. Personal rant over.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
The "click this button as soon as your cooldown timer clears" method will easily cause you to lose. You only have 10 skills on a bar at once. You make yourself vulnerable if you get yourself into a situation where 6 skills are cooling down at once.
Most of the combat is based around being flexible while on the move. Blindly having all your skills be in cooldown is incredibly dangerous.
You also have the serious problem of, say, one ele causing constant AoE knockdown (aka knocklock) and another doing constant AoE damage. Without a timer, the first ele can dedicate their mana to just doing AoE knockdowns and counting for casting time. The only fix for this would be to increase casting time to be greater than knockdown time, and then you get 2 or 3 people working together over Vent or TS (or Skype or whatever) doing the exact same thing and just counting out loud and knowing the order. This is ruinous for PvP and breaks PvE. So the enemy player takes and anti-knockdown skill? Well gee, Meteor took 1 skill on the bar, so the rest of the bar can be dedicated to spiking that one player down. And I'm talking about a single tactic - there are hundreds more.
Guild Wars 1 realized that and added a cooldown timer in addition to mana; Guild Wars 2 did away with the mana as superfluous.
Have you even try GW2 PVPing? Because the way you explain it in your comment I can officially said you haven't even play GW2 beta.
Seriously? Wow, you are not a Guild War fan. Having mana pool is NOT the key "thing". You seriously need to research more on GW2.
Not to get too off topic, but if you've played WoW since Cataclysm was released, you'd realize that for the most part mana might as well not exist except for healers or hybrid classes in a DPS role who try to off heal. The next expansion is shaping up to even further enforce this model. I'm not trying to convince you to play WoW, just trying to inform you that it seems the entire industry is moving away from the traditional EQ mana model.
WTF do I care if it's the state government or federal government?!? I still have to pay it.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I found the way GURPs handled Magic to be fairly interesting. Lower powered skills/magic could usually be used without Fatiguing the Mage - e.g a simple Fire Bolt might be able to be cast all day long (nearly). Whereas a FireBall or upper level magic would be more likely to cause Fatigue (fail the skill check to cast without penalty). When your fatigue was used up, I believe you could take physical damage from casting strenuous spells.
Usage of PowerStones and the very detailed Magic (item) creation system was also pretty decent. Granted GURPS in general has major flaws when stats go much beyond 14, but Gurps Magic was awesome. Warhammer FRP did something similiar, most cantrips didn't require a stress test - but while Warhammer had much more flavour to it's Magic and overall setting - the Magic System (and Magic Items, and magic creation) rules were pretty sparse or next to non-existant.