So I’ve had a few hours in Guild Wars 2 during this weekends Beta Testing Event. There have been some clearly beta issues, servers crashing under the strain and the like, but I am overall very impressed with the game.

Here are my first impressions in no particular order, with plus or minus or unsure notes…

+ Personal Loot. You might not be able to use everything a mob drops, but it is for you and you alone. I haven’t done a dungeon yet, but it works the same there, personal loot, no need to greed or need something. We’ll have to see how this works for bigger drops as the game goes on, if they have those epic drops that makes people ninja things in WoW and SWTOR.

+ Graphics and Artwork. I personally really enjoy the looks of the game and I don’t have it turned all the way up yet. It may even be better looking than SWTOR. The high degree of character customization is also nice… something SWTOR could learn from.

+ Color matching armor. This may seem trivial, but as I understand it, all the armor you pick up will end up matching the color pattern you picked for your character. This seems to have held with what little I’ve picked up so far. As I said, this may seem trivial, but it is a feature that many gamers wanted for ages. EDIT: Also if you want to change at a later time you can be using the hero menu.

+ Day/Night cycles. I commented on Day/Night cycles in this and other games before, but it really adds to the feel of the game. I haven’t had, at least to my knowledge, any events that were specific to a day or night cycle, but I haven’t really been in the game long enough to tell yet.

+ Local dynamic events. Love them so far. Nice to pop back in one from time to time as well and help others complete them.

+ Less grind. WoW could be a big grind fest if you don’t have the stuff from another character to give to the new alt. SWTOR was far less a grind, but there was still a bit of grinding at time, but I found it to be a bit more enjoyable. So far, and again, this is only a few hours into the beta weekend test event, it doesn’t seem to be even at SWTOR’s grind level.

+ NPCs actually walk around, and do stuff… This is sort of WoWish, but unlike SWTOR, which was one of my pet peeves about SWTOR, far too many NPCs you couldn’t even talk to and get a canned response. Seems more like WoW in this game in that many will say something, even if they all say more or less the same thing.

– Only 5 character slots. For the betas we should have quite a few more. Even in game I feel 5 is too few (you can buy more slots in the game). There are 8 professions, or classes as most games call it. There should be 6 at least. I can understand that since additional slots are for sale, they don’t want to give too many slots for free, there is no monthly fee after you buy the game itself, still 6 seems a better compromise to me than 5 and not just because it is a bigger number, so is 7 but I can see that as being too many for how their system works. For the beta however, I think they should perhaps highlight 5 or 6 slots with a note of some type saying this is the limit on release, and just have more slots for testing…

– No Asura testing yet… boo. I really wanted to try these guys out. I also wanted to try a Sylvari, but again, not in the present day beta. Both races are yet another reason for more than 5 slots… Really guys, if you are reading this post Arena Net (developers of Guild Wars 2), Asura, next beta test weekend… make it happen… please… 🙂

-/? Charr. Personally, I think they look too much like WoW’s Tauren. The Tauren in WoW are a bovine sort of race, while the Charr are feline, and in the face it shows, but the overall appearance is just too Taureny… and it isn’t that the Tauren are a bad race at all, but for some reason they rub me the wrong way. I’ll still probably roll a Charr at some point, but they are my personally least favorite race as of the moment, but who knows, the story may grab me. This is just me though as I know lots of people really dig the Charr. EDIT: Even my 3 year old, watching a video of somebody playing a Charr was like “Cow! Moo!”

? Dungeon queuing. I haven’t ran any yet, so I have no ideas.

? Crafting. I haven’t seen any crafting trainers yet, but I am still in the starting zones and those tend to show up at the first major city outside the training zones, so it may be just a matter of time. I really think SWTOR did a really good job with crafting. One super positive thing is that like most games, you are limited to only two, but you can trade you skill in one thing for another, pay a fee and you are good to go, then return to your old crafting skill and not lose your experience points and recipes/blueprints/etc in it. In most games if you unlearn a craft, you unlearn it, and have to start from scratch. Of course the higher you are in a craft the more expensive it will be to get that craft skill back, but at least you don’t have to grind it all the way up. The crafting system also sounds a lot like Minecraft in the guess how to make something system…

? Gathering. I haven’t done any of this yet, but I know that it is instanced, which means that if a few people come to the same node, they can all gather from it, and not just the first one to finish.

A video on gathering/crafting/transmutation

Closing initial thoughts. It is getting late, so I’ll close with a few thoughts and may add another post after trying the game some more. I am overall very impressed with Guild Wars 2 and in a short period of time it replaced SWTOR as my favorite MMO. With no monthly fee, the game is nearly like buying Skyrim or some other fantasy RPG, but with much greater variety of interesting content and you play with others. I am not going to stop playing SWTOR on occasions as I still really enjoy it, but GW2 has moved to my number one spot. I don’t know of anything else coming out any time soon that is as good a match for my play style. There are other high quality MMOs coming out, but they aren’t the sort I normally play… I may still demo them if they offer demos as I would like to try The Secret World for example, but I have doubts as to it fitting the kind of style I like to play. It may be a high end, high quality game, but if it doesn’t fit my personal style, then… Anyhow, if you like the fantasy setting, like RPGs and/or MMOs then I say Guild Wars 2 is well worth the money to buy. At least there isn’t a monthly fee. For what one would pay for a high end modern RPG, you get a very full game that is lots of fun that will keep fresh for some time to come.

EDIT: I follow this up in A Few More Hours in Guild Wars 2 and then And Another Thing – Yet More Guild Wars 2 Thoughts.

Get select items from this post:
Guild Wars 2… get it.

Star Wars: The Old Republic, perhaps my second favorite MMO game after Guild Wars 2 now. I am taking a short break from it, but if it didn’t have a monthly fee, I’ll probably still be a bit more active in it.

World of Warcraft (this edition has the main game and the first expansion for one really low price). WoW is still the grand daddy… not the first MMO, nor the first successful one, but it is the king of the hill and likely will be for a very long time for the solid fact that despite its age (and it shows it in many ways) it is still a fun game.