The Lincolncast, Episode 10: Release Date Ruminations

Hey guys!

For those who don't know, this is the Giant Bomb community's Guild Wars 2 podcast (made by our guild, Lincoln Force).

...So. There was some news this week huh? Strap yourself in for a lean and mean podcast where we actually put thought to words and lay out what the release date really means to you and me, beyond the numbers and excitement. Also, we touch upon the stress test including (finally) some impressions of Ascalon Catacombs.

Also, subscribe to the show!

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Show Notes

Intro music: "The Pentagon" by The Hamster Alliance

Featured Members:@selfconfessedcynic , @No0b0rAmA , @Tarkhein , @Dourin

Run time: 2:45:02

Topics for the week:

• Now that we've calmed down, we talk about our reactions to the release date using coherent sentences
• What are the strategic implications of Arenanet's chosen timing?
• With the final BWE announced, we discuss how the betas have been handled and how effective the process seems to have been
• We talk about our fears for issues which will most likely remain in the game come release
• We round out our announcement discussion with some good old speculation on what will be in the third beta
• Noob walks us through his run of Ascalon Catacombs and enlightens us upon balance and class dynamics in GW2
• And finally, we share stories of our experiences in the awesome Beta / Stress test ending events.

Plugs!

• Check out Dourin's gaming coverage at, http://www.twitch.tv/Dourin

Special Mentions!

• We'd like to wish a belated happy birthday to @shinboy630 !

Enjoy! Also, feel free to leave some criticism or feedback - TheLincolncast@gmail.com or @TheLincolncast on Twitter

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Nice to see that Noob's Shield of Abortion is still getting a lot of use.

Man, it feels like just last week that I saw episode nine. Which it was, I guess.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: Haha, yeah.

You were late to the party on the last ep (to the point where I was working on editing this one whilst commenting on your rant for the last one). Still, it's wierd seeing the two eps back to back on the forums.

Anyway, the Youtube link is now up and I'll work on the uploading.com one before finally posting on twitter and publishing to gw2guru.

@Maystack: It's really powerful against pregnant women.

I'm so sorry.

@selfconfessedcynic I know you offhandedly mentioned a live stream when the game goes live in this episode, we should live stream gw1 leading up to it as well lol.

Unless I totally missed stuff during our dungeon run, it wasn't tied to personal story. I was under the impression the story mode was for the story of the dungeon itself. I'd love some definitive proof either way. I know as a Norn I didn't have any story hooks pointing to this dungeon, but perhaps I just wasn't at that point in my personal story (although I am pretty far along).

@Subjugation: I believe the personal story leads players to regrouping the heroes of destiny's edge, and this seems like something that's apart of that.

@shinboy630: @No0b0rAmA:

Oh, if y'all want to play some GW1, perhaps we can start using the steam group to arrange play dates? (I don't want to use the term bombing run...)

I'd definitely be up for some gw1 events. I still need 1 more point in my hall of monuments...

For the record I'm pretty sure you don't need to do Catacombs for your personal story (like 95% sure). The reason it's called "Story Mode" is because each dungeon has it's own story. Also, I'm not convinced it's the first dungeon you go through, but rather just the one ANet is showing off, but don't hold me too that.

Edit: I checked the wiki and it states that they are found in the personal storyline every 10 levels starting at 30, but it does not say you have to do them when you check the Personal Story page.

Also, I'm not convinced it's the first dungeon you go through, but rather just the one ANet is showing off, but don't hold me too that.

I finally made it to the end of this episode, and I just wanted to say that I hated LA Noire. A lot. Fuck that game.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: what about caudecus's manor in beetletun?

edit: neeeevermind, you're right. I just found this list

I have to say I am not as worried about the higher level area's as you guys are. I think you guys underestimating A-Net. We have to remember there were over 1 million beta signups, out of that million there are probably several thousand closed beta testers out there, and they are probably on the same server, or mixed in with just a couple of servers. I think the "High" level content is getting great attention right now as well as the Shatterer event. The few leaks we have seen, the guys that were playing where in the high lvl 60's. We also have to remember that the build of the game we are playing is not the build they are using internally. They are probably 2-3 builds ahead of us on the closed beta test servers.

Also about the other starting areas, from all the leaks I have seen it has been an Asura and Sylvari character, which means the closed beta testers are testing out these areas, I for one hope they don't release these areas for the next BWE because I don't want it spoiled for me, even if I don't play the races in the BWE I will still see a bunch of it all over reddit, mmorpg.com, ETC..

Also, I am 98.7% sure that the dungeons do not affect your personal story at all. It's just a separate storyline that you can follow if you want. I also do not want henchmen or hero's in this game, it was fine for GW1 because it was not your traditional MMO. I think it would start a bad trend of people not grouping up together and just relying on these NPC to help them through the dungeon. I would much rather have a dungeon finder in the game then henchmen or hero's.

They have been doing these weekend beta tests since GW1. I remember being apart of the beta's for GW1 when they first started, and GW1 turned out fine IMO. Have faith in A-Net, I think everything will be fine. Remember they have said they will release it when it's ready. That means in August it will be ready, Have faith. =]

@Elitespy said:

I have to say I am not as worried about the higher level area's as you guys are. I think you guys underestimating A-Net. We have to remember there were over 1 million beta signups, out of that million there are probably several thousand closed beta testers out there, and they are probably on the same server, or mixed in with just a couple of servers. I think the "High" level content is getting great attention right now as well as the Shatterer event. The few leaks we have seen, the guys that were playing where in the high lvl 60's. We also have to remember that the build of the game we are playing is not the build they are using internally. They are probably 2-3 builds ahead of us on the closed beta test servers.

THANK YOU! See you assholes? It'll be a-ok.

@Elitespy said:

I also do not want henchmen or hero's in this game, it was fine for GW1 because it was not your traditional MMO. I think it would start a bad trend of people not grouping up together and just relying on these NPC to help them through the dungeon. I would much rather have a dungeon finder in the game then henchmen or hero's.

A dungeon finder would be cool. However, I have no problem with henchmen either. The game needs some mechanic for when activity starts to dwindle.

@Elitespy said:

I have to say I am not as worried about the higher level area's as you guys are. I think you guys underestimating A-Net. We have to remember there were over 1 million beta signups, out of that million there are probably several thousand closed beta testers out there, and they are probably on the same server, or mixed in with just a couple of servers. I think the "High" level content is getting great attention right now as well as the Shatterer event. The few leaks we have seen, the guys that were playing where in the high lvl 60's. We also have to remember that the build of the game we are playing is not the build they are using internally. They are probably 2-3 builds ahead of us on the closed beta test servers.

Yeah plus there is still that closed beta that is always running. How do we know that they aren't testing high level content? You would think that because they are using the BWEs to test some starting areas, they are not bothering to test them internally (or at least are not testing them as much).

@shinboy630 said:

@Elitespy said:

I have to say I am not as worried about the higher level area's as you guys are. I think you guys underestimating A-Net. We have to remember there were over 1 million beta signups, out of that million there are probably several thousand closed beta testers out there, and they are probably on the same server, or mixed in with just a couple of servers. I think the "High" level content is getting great attention right now as well as the Shatterer event. The few leaks we have seen, the guys that were playing where in the high lvl 60's. We also have to remember that the build of the game we are playing is not the build they are using internally. They are probably 2-3 builds ahead of us on the closed beta test servers.

Yeah plus there is still that closed beta that is always running. How do we know that they aren't testing high level content? You would think that because they are using the BWEs to test some starting areas, they are not bothering to test them internally (or at least are not testing them as much).

Agreed. No game every tests everything in the open betas. There is nothing to worry about.

Most of the suggestions people have made in the BWEs can be applied to the higher level areas as well. Bugs and things will be discovered by internal testers.

@shinboy630: Yeah, I feel that the BWE's aren't really for us to find bugs but for A-Net to gather information about their server loads. Yeah with more people in the BWE's you will probably find some more smaller bugs and such, but the stuff that we find might already be ironed out in the internal build of the game.

@Elitespy: @UssjTrunks: @shinboy630:

I don't know guys - that sounds like a lot of optimism to me. As we say in the podcast, with a closed beta testing team you simply can't get the sheer amount of data that you could with open beta testing. Additionally, various companies have proven time and time again that closed beta-ing areas for an MMO always leaves quite a bit of shit still broke come release.

Now, I'm not saying there'll be some game-breaking stuff left in the higher level areas - that's unlikely and what the closed guys are meant to find in the first place - but, again, as we say on the show, it's more likely that the balance just won't be as solid as the lower level stuff until they go through a couple of post-release patches. I have faith in Anet, but asking them to be as polished with higher level stuff as with their incredibly smoothed out (due to just SO much testing) lower level content is asking for the moon.

As for there being an internal build and an beta one, that is a given, however I think next beta will be quite telling as with release being so close, I'm guessing that the two would be near identical (with some switches flipped to stop us going to certain areas).

@selfconfessedcynic: I don't think it is too much optimism. Let's just do a little math.

Over 1 Million signed up for the beta.

Let's say out of that 1 million, 200,000 got in.

Let's also say they have 3 closed beta servers (so they can test out the WvW mechanic)

That is almost 67,000 players per server.

Now we know that in the media builds there was a level up NPC, I think we can guess that is also in for closed beta testing.

I was in the Lord of the Rings: Online closed beta testing and they had a level up NPC that would level you up to 10-20-30-40-50, they gave you the best gear so you could test out the best content. I am going to assume the A-net devs are at least as smart if not smarter than the Turbine devs so I wouldn't doubt this feature is in there.

One thing I heard thrown around in the podcast is "Completely Untested" meaning that there is content that is completely untested, which is just false, I believe everything has been tested, just from the leaks we have seen. I have a feeling this game is going to come out being one of the most polished we have seen. I don't feel the NEED to go in and test higher level content because I firmly believe that there are a bunch of closed testers that would have my mindset as a gamer and will get A-net the info they need to get bugs fixed. Maybe that is just me.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: @Elitespy:

I dunno - I guess I call myself Cynic for a reason : )

Well, maybe I should call myself a pessimist instead, who knows.

I have to say that when we said "completely untested" on the show, we simply meant untested by the public. I do think they've done their due diligence and polished it up as much as they can with closed beta testers (I actually think of that 1 mil sign-ups they only picked maybe 5-10,000), however I still think that there will be a lot of stuff just not quite together come release, though I don't think there'll be anything outright broken.

All I can say is that I hope I'm proven wrong.

Either way, I can live with any of that stuff and am SO excited for release. On the other hand, there are a bunch of things which they have now that I have legitimate concerns for (the guild and privacy systems as discussed on the guildcast this week, the skill trees, traits still seem unfinished [though they said they'd fix them, we'll talk about it on this week's show], some elements of all of the classes seem a bit unfinished [same thing here], sPvP matchmaking and more).

*shrug* the game is certainly not perfect - but damn, it's still going to be awesome. I mean, it already is.

@selfconfessedcynic: I wouldn't worry too much about how stress-tested the higher levels have been because fortunately for us, major patches can be done simply by logging out and logging back in, guild wars has never needed to be taken down for 8 hours to apply a new patch and the same applies here.

The first two weeks or so might feel a little like beta weeks but I'm sure problems can be ironed out much faster than other MMOs, so hopefully it will be mostly painless.

(as an outside observer) there seems to be a lot of things they need to get done in 2 months though, you're right that sPvP matchmaking, joining as a group, joining games in general kinda sucks, they need item previews, first person, the ability to enable / disable mouse look, skill trees being properly polished, skills that are simply missing, some 8(?) major dungeons all tweaked and balanced, dynamic events resetting and triggering properly, 5 races worth of personal stories all the way up to level 80 presumably, EMOTES?! (can't launch without /dance). An iPhone app was supposedly going to be released in time for the game but I haven't heard anything about that in ages either.

There's a lot to do but that's not to say it will negatively impact the game too much if it doesn't all get done by release date.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: @Benny:

Yup, pretty much the only things they REALLY NEED TO FUCKING FIX are privacy settings, the guild system and sPvP matchmaking as far as I can see.

ED: Of which I believe they're in the fix-testing stages for the first two.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: @selfconfessedcynic: I totally agree, it's crucial that most of these are in by launch, but I suspect that certain things like dungeon balancing and events bugging can be fixed on the fly and will be tweaked a lot after launch before they are solid, whereas emotes and matchmaking and item previews kinda need to be in there or that will be a big mistake on their part.