How's BWE 3 for you guys?

I've got greatly improved performance (at least that's what it seems to me). My major annoyance from previous BWEs is still very much unchanged though, and that's the ridiculous respawn rate. Went exploring a cave on my own, and of course the shitty buggers respawn as quickly as I can kill them solo. So flipping annoying. Will have to make another thread about this on their beta feedback forum.

If you agree on that account, please do the same. Respawn timers got to be toned the fuck down - it's unreal really.

I am only lvl 4 at this point, but yes the respawn rate is crazy. I alt-tabbed out to check an email and by the time I read it, everything in my area had respawned and I had to kill like 3 things that had aggro'd. It's ridiculous.

Much better performance. I still kinda feel like not playing because the charr starting zone is boring and because the release is so close.

I did notice that the respawn was still incredibly fast. A few of us were dead, and by the time the enemies had been cleared to revive us, they were back.

There was also a point where enemies died as soon as they spawned which was strange, but that might have been because the servers had only just gone up.

Performance is massively improved, I can play on max settings now, even in busy zones. The sylvari and asura creation stuff is really cool too, they're both great races. I do wish the asura had a few more hair options though.

Respawn rates are definitely still too high, although I haven't seen the dynamic events in the starting zones repeat as often as they were before. I haven't played all that much, but I was running around the asura lands for quite a bit.

Also, have they removed the ability to shift+print screen to hide the UI in screenshots?

Dabbled a bit in Yak's Bend WvW. There's quite the pressure from the Red World, which currently holds about 75% of the lands. Managed to get back all the objectives in our own third of the central WvW map (and grab the vista in the keep - good stuff), before the servers buckled under the stress. Guess a bit of sPvP is up next. Hopefully they're up and running.

Playing Necro isn't my favorite thing thus far. The staff is quite okay. The profession mechanic is... hmm... not that great. Throw away pets is nice. Will have to see how it'll shape up in sPvP - playing around with the full depth of the class. Time's short though, soon I'll have to switch to Thief and then the Engineer... gonna be tough to topple Elementalist and Ranger though. Going back at it.

Also learned about shift-clicking on points of interest on the minimap, whilst the chatwindow is active, to link locations into the chat - click on it, and it opens the map and zooms to that location - invaluable for communicating efficiently with strangers. Guild Wars 2 is extremely impressive in that way. The thoughtfulness present in pretty much every aspect of the design is unprecedented. Another fine example is the minimap. Just hover your mousecursor over it, and zoom in and out with your mousewheel - what a precious little thing saying so much about its developers. Bravo.

Edit: Just played a couple of hours of sPvP. The new Battleground is great, albeit I believe the keeplord should be worth at least 200 points to be viable. It's a tough guy and getting to him/her is costly. Then again, I'm rolling PUG currently, so what do I know. Leveled up to PvP Rank 5 and bought some rewards - either random lootbags similar to SWTOR (oh how I loathe thee), or tokens for the Mystic Forge for specific slots. Went and tried to claim my prices, but nuh-uh, those things require more material - but I have not got the faintest clue what I need to farm additionally to the tokens.

Oh well, that stuff is only visual upgrades anyways, and I'll figure it out soon enough - but yeah, there will be some farming and/or random luck involved in getting new sPvP shinies. Oh - in the lootbag, I got a Finisher Customizer... something about a 'Rabbit Finisher'. Sure sparked my curiosity what that'll entail. Will have to try that when I wake up tomorrow.

Have fun, and don't die of exhaustion.

This game is amazing. That's my feedback. First beta weekend for me.

I was getting tired of the same old events types and whatnot, but I just started exploring the level 15+ area near Divinity's Reach and I'm feeling better about the event system.

huge improvement in performance indeed I thought I would hate the asura but it turns out their animations make them feel much better than any other race so far !

The only thing that bothers me is that: when you play the game in windowed (not windowed - full screen) and try maximize the window, it just switches to full screen. I just want it to maximize in windowed (like a normal window).

EDIT 21JULY2012: What is with the normal enemy affixes? I was fighting this skale enemy beside the Shire of Bettletun and it has a "Renegerate Health" affix. I couldn't kill it when underwater (restores health faster than I could lower it's HP by 50%).

Also, the "unlock skills by killing stuff" sounded better in concept. As stated above, I only had 1 underwater skill that could not kill stuff. I'd rather just buy skills than unlock them, if STANDARD enemies are going to have affixes.

This game is the ultimate tease. Last time I was a little disappointed that I couldn't run it properly, so had to let the beta event pass me by. This time they've optimised it enough to the point where I can just play enough to know how fun it is, but not enough to play it properly.

My biggest issue with this game right now is the respawn rate is way to fast.

Im also not sure about how the combat feels. Been playing a warrior and not sure what it is but it feels awkward somehow. Need to think about it some more.

Got a level 7 warrior and I'm liking it more and more the further I get. When I first played last night I couldn't really get a feel for it as every where was so busy it was a complete cluster fuck (I believe that is the scientific term).

Played some more sPvP last night. Man, longbow rangers are so OP but so much fun! Also, the new map with the Lords is leaps and bounds ahead of the previous 2 in terms of fun. It is much better laid out (it sort of has moba style "lanes" in addition to the Lords) and seems to be larger than the other maps. It will be interesting to see what strategies are formed, like how the 4/1 split has become the meta on the forest of niflhel map.

It seems like sPvP will be featuring a wholly account based progression, with an overall sPvP rank and a general unlock system. Love the idea of it. I'll definitely chose one class of each archtype for sPvP. Likely Warrior, Elementalist and Ranger.

@shinboy630: ohhh cool I will have to check out PvP again.

With shadows on my FPS is 10. This is a PC that can run Crysis on High with DX9, Crysis 2 on ultra high, and ArmA 2 on high. Doesn't make any sense to me, considering all of those games are more graphically intensive, and ArmA 2 is more CPU intensive.

This game is very laggy on my PC.

@CL60: Time to upgrade.

Been playing mostly WvWvW and long bow is OP as shit also you get almost no money from it.

Respawn rate is effing insane. Outside of that I don't really have any complaints.

Just fucking sick.

Runs a lot better than BWE 1, I didn't play in BWE 2 so not sure about the difference from 2-3. But now I am starting to feel really fricken bored. I don't know maybe I am alone here, but I feel like the combat is awful. Everything else about the game is incredible, but even after playing all the classes they feel so damn boring. Casters are especially bad. Meh, oh well.

My first look at the game and I gotta say I was quite surprised. Did not expect it to be as much of a collect-athon as it is. I can see how some people enjoy the style of questing, but when you have to do it all anyways (unless you just do the same one over and over for some reason) I think I'd just much rather have the more traditional direct approach. I do like the map completion aspect though, but at the same time I can see it being the thing that burns me out on the game too.

Other than that I was hugely disappointed by the weapon system. I had only heard some minor details about it before and discovering it's basically just a handful of different sets and you've pretty much already seen it all before lvl 10 meant that just after a few hours I already knew exactly what weapons I would be using for the rest of my time with the game and now everything else is just useless. This might ofc change as I learn more about late-game stuff, but it was very clear to me what set of weapon skills I enjoyed the most.

Also, pretty disappointed that there's no dungeons before 30 (at least I think so), which sorta stopped my enthusiasm for playing any more beta. I enjoyed my time with it though, but having pretty much figured out if I'd enjoy the game, what I'd like to play and that I'm not gonna see any group content during the beta I now really just want to play it for real. I still fear that the game caters too much towards PvP (which I'm not really into), but I think I'm gonna at least get more than enough hours of PvE enjoyment out of it to be worth a purchase. It has it's issues (and is far from the second coming that the fans have been hyping it as), but I'm just too much of an MMO sucker making me buy into this stuff yet again =D

Leveling still seems a bit off in terms of pacing. Rolling a Norn War this time and went to queensdale since I'd never run there before and did everything by 15 when this was a 1-17 area. I wasn't terribly under levelled and could still solo everything if I was smart but this has happened to me in every weekend event. I think it's more due to the free flow nature of the hearts and event system than anything. Also the champion level fights are terrible for melle huge spike damage when fighting a cave troll with a zerg that basically one shots me and other melle fighters while range is able to run around. Melle vs Range imbalance seems to always happen in MMO's at the start though.

Runs like a dream on my rig which is about 3 years old.

EDIT: was able to 100% both Queensdale and Norn area only needed that Capt Mattox skill challenge and it's bugged *insert* angry emoticon.

@SirPsychoSexy: I kinda feel the same at the moment. Warrior is just so slow and I still cannot get over the animation priority on other classes either. It will never feel right to me. 300+ days logged WoW time just doesn't wash out.

Other then that I would guess 50% of all performance issues are bad AMD drivers, 50% is lacking CPU power.

@shinboy630 said:

Played some more sPvP last night. Man, longbow rangers are so OP but so much fun! Also, the new map with the Lords is leaps and bounds ahead of the previous 2 in terms of fun. It is much better laid out (it sort of has moba style "lanes" in addition to the Lords) and seems to be larger than the other maps. It will be interesting to see what strategies are formed, like how the 4/1 split has become the meta on the forest of niflhel map.

I had a few thoughts from before and after watching a couple of matches on that map. Since you've actually played it, see if any of these make sense to you:

• remove the left and right capture points, but leave the center point
• add a capture point to the interior of each base
• toughen up the base defenses (gates, NPCs)
• significantly increase the point reward for killing the enemy lord

These changes would (theoretically) align the map more with the GvG from GW1, which was pretty clearly ArenaNet's goal here. You would have to focus more attention and effort on not only assaulting the enemy base, but also the protection of your own. The center point would be a hotbed for combat and provide a nice advantage to the holding team like the flag stand in GW1, and because the side lanes are "clear" it would be more viable for a one- or two-man gank to slip through while their team held the center.

I understand that a typical sPvP match is only meant to be about half as long as the average GvG match, but I think they could tweak the numbers in such a way as to make it work.

@Heltom92 said:

a complete cluster fuck (I believe that is the scientific term).

Indeed, doctor.

I genuinely don't enjoy feeling like a chump again when going back to the lower level areas.

@CL60: Time to upgrade.

@Rohok said:

With shadows on my FPS is 10. This is a PC that can run Crysis on High with DX9, Crysis 2 on ultra high, and ArmA 2 on high. Doesn't make any sense to me, considering all of those games are more graphically intensive, and ArmA 2 is more CPU intensive.

The game hasn't been optimized for all CPUs/GPUs yet. It'll be fixed by release.

Loving the improved performance, it's playable maxed out for me now and I'm also digging the Asura starting zone. Think I'm picking Guardian come retail.

Framerate is still all over the place. Really shitty. I'm only running on medium still and it flip flops between 50 fps and 20, staying in the 30s usually. My machine should destroy this on medium, it sucks. Vsync seems to make the issue worse, because it can't decide if it's going to limit my framerate to 30fps or 60fps and so will randomly lock me at 30 for periods of time.

Additionally, reducing the graphics slider from balanced to max performance has 0 affect on my framerate. Just as bad as before. And increasing it to max appearance only dips my frame rate by 5 fps at most, in fact most of the time it's the same.

Finally, is it just me, or does the game look better on medium than on max settings? When you max it out there's a really shitty depth of field that makes everything in the distance look like a blurry turd. It's genuinely worse.

I feel as though the questing has been overhyped. I'm enjoying the game, as I do with other MMOs. But I still feel as though the questing is nothing new. Everything I've played so far is still just "Go kill a bunch of things, or collect stuff." This doesn't include the personal story stuff.(Mostly.) It's not the second coming of jesus everybody has been making it out to be.

Looks and works great, plays fun too, I'm actually quite interested in the game now.
 
It randomly crashes for me however, I hear a buzzing sound and my screen turns black and goes to no signal.
Settings on medium, didn't change much, my pc can handle a lot better but I don't care much for graphics.
 
Shame, I hate MMO's that crash on me, kills the immersion.

I feel like i've played Guild Wars 2 before, called Warhammer Online(the WvWvW specifically). Not saying that's a bad thing though, Guild Wars 2 has better combat mechanics and generally improved gameplay concepts than Warhammer.

@Marz: I totally agree. It definitely feels like they took some of the great concepts of keep sieges in WAR and turned it up to 11. I wished at first that they would've carried over the solid player models in pvp from WAR, but I think the positioning in GW2 is even more important and interesting than having players be solid. Allows for much more frantic combat.

I like the leaf dudes a lot. Wish their armor had a similar leafy-style and not just same ol human clothes, ruins the look of the race, makes them look like everything else. Armor should have had a Naavi feel (primitive, natural, elemental)
 
At first I was never going to try down syndrome race, but I gave them a try and they are amusing. I like their home town the best (Cube thing) as its the least cluttered. Every other home town is a useless mess.  
 
Tried elementalist this weekend, first time I play a mage in any rpg ever, liking it a lot. I usually stick to bows/guns.  
 
Still slightly disappointed in the GFX, the way things are textured and modeled, and the post processing over all of it makes it look like a last-gen game. Some heavy post processing could fix all of that (like what they do in PlanetSide 2 closed beta (assets are not especially amazing but they are really well lit and rendered)). GW2 gfx doesnt do the concept art justice. I dont like the UI elements either, hope most of that is placeholder. doesnt have a polished feel, which by now at the end of beta, it should. 

I like the game a bit more after every beta.

the asura won me over completely. unfortunately for me, I will not be able to dig a little gnomish warrior on the long term so I will stick to human for my main...but I really digged them. The Sylvari look great, their starting zone also.

I tried mesmer/sylvari this time around...that is for like 2 hours before I got bored of this class... definitely not for me. I would love to love them but that just doesn't quite make it for me. So I decided to narrow down my hesitation for my second roll...ele or thief ? ele still disapoint me: I do not like how the spells look like, their effects how they feel...not immediate enough no "oomph"

so I ended playing asura/thief and I had a blast in PvE.

the second day I played mainly sPvP and I will create a topic about it because I think that this is it: I am in love with the sPvP in GW2!

All together, I am really impressed by the quality of the work of ANet, even more than usual...these guys rock !

Played the beta for about 20 minutes this weekend. I made an elf, killed the dream dragon, then got bored in the starting area. Standing around with 100+ other people, slaughtering fireflies the instant they spawn... /yawn. not quite the atmosphere I think they were going for.

Level 21 Norn Guardian reporting in.

Currently sitting at 97% in Snowden Drifts. Missing one vista, one quest, and one last skill point that's annoyingly locked behind a level 25 veteran mob. Respawn rate is not helping. Hopefully I'll be able to clear the zone before the end of the beta weekend!

How's everybody's progress, so far?

I discovered WvW and have utterly exhausted myself. It's amazing. Shit is CONSTANTLY popping off, which is exactly the reason why I'm not gonna stick through for the big beta finale. I must have spent all day there just pushing forward, falling back, pushing forward, falling back, etc.

One of the few video game things I gotta take a break from.

Did they do a ninja update or something? Performance went up a bit again for me. Runs so smooth now maxed out.

and holy blue blazes Guardian is so much fun, also Asura has far too much cute.

Played a few hours of mesmer and thief each. Thief I wasn't too happy with, as the initiative system just wasn't my cup of tea. I also didn't use the steal skill at all, as when I did, it didn't produce anything useful. Mesmer however, was pretty awesome. Greatsword in particular was a ton of fun.

This was my first time playing GW2 and I was unsure if I would buy it or not going into it. I'm still not 100% sure but man is it a good game. I had played years of WoW and a bit of SWTOR before this and they just aren't comparable. If I find the time this year I'm definitely going to consider coming back.

First time player for this BWE3. Had a blast leveling a few Asura to 15 (Mes., Necro, Thief). Found my calling with the Mesmer. Love the way their tiny frames carry a greatsword, and their animations were great all around. Final event was amusing with the Hunger Games and bots. I must say, I'll miss playing it the next couple days. I hope many gave accurate feedback after quests, unlike my friends who just cancel the feedback windows. It's a big help to them in terms of where to improve areas. Looking forward to release.

The Hunger Games was a fantastic ending, and coupled with the great time I had in PvP with a Charr necro I really enjoyed the few hours I had with the game this BWE.

Really can't decide what to do come release though with my main. I definitely want to have a Necromancer main, they're just too awesome, but I feel I've seen everything in the Charr starter zone. I really wanted to make a Sylvari, but I can't accept having a Sylvari necro. I'm to attached to a Charr necro to know what to do... Try a different class as Sylvari? Hmm.

@Zomgfruitbunnies said:

one last skill point that's annoyingly locked behind a level 25 veteran mob.

I don't know if it was still possible in this beta, but I was able to find a spot on a nearby ledge where they wouldn't aggro on me and I could spam long-range until they died.

THISGAMEISAWESOME

@Chavtheworld said:

The Hunger Games was a fantastic ending, and coupled with the great time I had in PvP with a Charr necro I really enjoyed the few hours I had with the game this BWE.

Really can't decide what to do come release though with my main. I definitely want to have a Necromancer main, they're just too awesome, but I feel I've seen everything in the Charr starter zone. I really wanted to make a Sylvari, but I can't accept having a Sylvari necro. I'm to attached to a Charr necro to know what to do... Try a different class as Sylvari? Hmm.

Play a Charr Necro in another race's starting zone?