Guild Wars 2: Final Beta Thoughts

Quickly, my thoughts on the Guild Wars 2 beta I was so lucky to have recieved a code for.

I played for about five hours total, and half of that was either wandering about cluelessly (sylvari) or dicking around with K (asura). On the whole, I enjoyed the game and the inventive ways it breaks the MMO cliches, but I did have some complaints. 

The voice actors weren’t my favorite, and to hear perfectly normal human voices coming from bestial fanged mouths and occasionally beaks provoked a five minute rant to K about the linguistic limitations of anatomy, and also me quoting a Tempest soliloqy with my fingers jammed in my mouth to imitate orc fangs.

The character designing was A-plus, and I give them MAJOR props for not overly sexualizing all of the races, and having unsexualized options for those that mildly were.  I was very, very impressed.

Of all the races and classes I played, the Ranger was (surprisingly, given my history with MMOs and ranged classes) my least favorite, and the Engineer was my favorite.  I wasn’t too fond of the charr from a design perspective, given that they were furry beasts who wore underwear and shoes (what?) but I deeply loved the sylvari design, and K and I spent a good while discussing their biology and his fantastic theory about the undead.  My favorite race to play, though, was the asura — which K thought was hysterical, given that all the concept art I saw of them before beta weekend creeped me the hell out.  But no, they’re amazing, and their architecture is drool-worthy, and I adore them.

The way your skill set changes depending on the combination of weapons you’re holding, or quest items, or underwater (!) is the best thing I’ve seen in any MMO, and I mean that.  Also, leveling is standard no matter how high you get, so unlike other MMOs in which it gets progressively harder to hit each successive level, GW2 smoothes that out and grants each level the same percentage of XP.  I don’t know if I can bring myself to appreciate WoW and LotRO quite as much after playing an MMO that assumes you’re playing a game to HAVE FUN instead of because you enjoy hundreds of hours of crap grindy quests.  I don’t know about you, but I have very limited hours in which to play games, and they’d damn well better be worth my time.  If I, as a seasoned MMO player, spend more time griping and complaining than laughing or smiling, you’re doin’ it wrong, game designers.

I do want to say this, though: the final event of the beta weekend was UTTER TRIPE.  It was called Hunger Royale (everyone groan, please) and was, as you might well imagine, an incredibly glitchy and frustrating mash-up between the Hunger Games and Battle Royale in a zone that looked stolen directly from Halo 2.  They removed our classes and made us all “assassins” with brand new micromanagement skill sets.  Within ten minutes, my character fell through the floor and got stuck in a hole, and K couldn’t use any of his skills, so we did the kindest thing one can do with a sick piece of programming and left it to die.  By which I mean we buggered off to Lion’s Arch and trolled some Norn with owl potions.

The game is stunningly beautiful no matter where you go, and the designers have really done their job with world design and lore, despite the occasional unnecessary earth-media references that break my suspension of disbelief.  (Guys, if it wasn’t funny when WoW went overboard with that, it still isn’t funny now.)  If I can afford to buy it when it comes out, I probably will, especially considering it’s an MMO that doesn’t force me to pay monthly or for upgrades, which is revolutionary and greatly appreciated.

All in all, bravo, GW2!  You’ve issued a challenge to all makers and players of MMOs, and have created something vastly unique in a morass of clonelike games, and you are to be commended for it.