So for the last few days I've been reading the Official Beta forums, and I've come away with a really eerie feeling. Everything seems to be in limbo in terms of balance, nothing seems finished. Developers admitting to flaws in basic mechanics, or core class mechanics. I don't mean in the sense of updating a few spreadsheets, but reworking core ideas.

Now I understand that developer's willing to admit such information is great, but the degree of issues presented is staggering. Reworking multiple mechanics form basic to core across multiple professions is a huge task, not to mention non balancing related development. The level of Optimization required itself seems staggering, that it would take 1-2 months to fix alone.

The game definitively seemed polished to a certain degree during beta, but as you read the beta forums, there's a new issue in every thread. These aren't unsupported issues either, most present legitimate points, and are hard to ignore. Ranging from animations issues, action queuing, various issues with various weapons, utility skills, followed by bugs. Developer's then saying " Yah its broken, we don't know what to do about it" isn't reassuring either. The fact that all pet/companion A.I has been broken for the last 3 beta tests is a sign of just the technical difficulties still present.

All PvP being available to everyone 10 mins into the game means they can't release with such issues present. This game has to be well balanced on release, more so then any previous MMO, otherwise it can have some awful effects.

Further more no one has any concrete information about the status of the completion percentage relating to game content creation. Early rumblings don't seem to be as positive as everyone thought.

Now when you add in the technical touches still needed for Guild Wars 2, I really don't see this releasing anytime before September at the earliest. I would probably say November, maybe December if they want to get out of the way of other major titles.

I believe this new Combat system is giving them a lot of trouble right now, and its just starting to bite them in the ass. They might of been overconfident due to the CBT, and general positive vibe they gave off.

I agree.

Man - I could stop there, I guess? I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out in November either.

It'll be out for the holidays. They'll crunch and put in the overtime.

You also seem to forget how broken literally every MMO is at launch. They'd rather have it out the door than sit on it and have the hype die down.

It really comes down to people forgetting what the word "beta" use to mean, and what it means now.

I noticed A LOT of bugs everywhere I went in PvE. That alone will take 1-2 months to iron out. The game seemed pretty balanced to me in PvP though. Some classes needed to be tweaked, but nothing major. A lot of complaints on the beta forums are just QQing too.

I think July/August is the most likely release period.

@Skogen: That viewpoint is irrelevant, since Areanet had a whole interview where they discussed what "Beta" means in today's market. Admitting to the fact that Beta in today's market is more demo, then solely testing, and that this needed to be reflected in the Guild Wars 2 beta. So in that respect this is not a traditional Beta, that is why even the press was allowed to Beta test before users relatively free of NDA.

The issue is that Areanet got over confident, they thought they had an easy 3 month open beta on their hands when those comments were made, this is no longer the case.

@UssjTrunks: I disagree, the Beta forums are not full of QQing, many present valid points. I'd say that 90% are valid 10% are QQ. The official forums are surprisingly informative, well thought-out and organized. All the QQ thread's have filtered to the back, or have been deleted.

A lot of what you are seeing in the forums OP is the whiners present in every beta. Are there issues? Yes. Just not to the extent that every tom, dick, and harrry would have you believe.

I for one really hope this turns out to be true. Game needs a lot of work and the more time in development only will (hopefully) improve the game. But with that said, I do look forward to more Beta Weekends.

@Jayzilla said:

A lot of what you are seeing in the forums OP is the whiners present in every beta. Are there issues? Yes. Just not to the extent that every tom, dick, and harrry would have you believe.

I agree. Although I have not played the game, I've seen the beta forums of other games (eg SWTOR) and it definitely represents the vocal minority and not the stance of the majority.

I don't see this as a total nightmare either way it turns out, but I do have a small correction to make. "Content creation" isn't something that will happen again before launch, as the game is already feature-complete. The only changes to be made from here on in are just going to be tweaks to what's already there.

I'm still holding on to my belief of late July. ANet can fix up all the balances they've been talking about for the may bwe. Then another one in June. By that time, they should have most of the issues worked out. And like @MikkaQ said, most MMOs are pretty shaky on release.

Haven't played it myself, but heard from a few people now that it's got some serious issues. Beta's usually does, just not as many issues. Mate of mine was pretty damning of it when he took part a while back. Let's hope they can fix it. 

The only glitch I came across in the 14ish hours I played was that dude who is supposed to give you a skill point in the Human area, except he's dead and laying down on the floor half stuck in a building.

@TrueEnglishGent said:

Haven't played it myself, but heard from a few people now that it's got some serious issues. Beta's usually does, just not as many issues. Mate of mine was pretty damning of it when he took part a while back. Let's hope they can fix it.

Other than a few balance issues and the utter lack of optimisation, I don't think there were many problems. Certainly nothing "damning", it already feels far more polished and complete than most MMO's out there after release.

I agree that a release date probably isn't going to be as early as a lot of people think/want though. I'd bet on August/September-ish not the June/early July's that keep getting thrown around.

I stopped paying attention to it after one of the high-up developers said that the melee classes were for hardcore gamers since casuals wouldn't be able to figure them out, because they had to use skills from First Person Shooters, which include using WASD to move, using the mouse to aim, and pressing keys 1-5.

If that is what they consider hardcore gameplay that casual players won't be able to figure out, then I think I'll stick with World of Warcraft where you need to do that and use more buttons that five...

That's what beta is for, figuring out the problems now before the game is shipped. The idea of what a beta is has been so warped over the last few years, people have forgotten what they're actually for. After waiting five years already, I'm fine with them spending a few more months ironing out the creases.

@Village_Guy: That sounds like you've either taken something out of context or read a totally corrupted version of what was actually said (for one thing, they would never use the term "hardcore gamer"). But a lot of people complained about the melee combat after the beta, people were finding it much harder and didn't seem to understand how to play it. GW2 doesn't play like typical MMO's, where you stand infront of your target and mash skill buttons, positioning and movement is incredibly important and you can't just tank everything. The developer post simply explained that you need to put more thought into setting up your attacks and knowing when to retreat to set up buffs and heal.

They admitted it was harder to play than ranged combat is though and that they'll be tweaking the balance and possibly adding more defensive skills.

@WinterSnowblind said:

@Village_Guy: That sounds like you've either taken something out of context or read a totally corrupted version of what was actually said (for one thing, they would never use the term "hardcore gamer"). But a lot of people complained about the melee combat after the beta, people were finding it much harder and didn't seem to understand how to play it. GW2 doesn't play like typical MMO's, where you stand infront of your target and mash skill buttons, positioning and movement is incredibly important and you can't just tank everything. The developer post simply explained that you need to put more thought into setting up your attacks and knowing when to retreat to set up buffs and heal.

They admitted it was harder to play than ranged combat is though and that they'll be tweaking the balance and possibly adding more defensive skills.

Tera straight up tells you that close combat classes are harder to player than ranged. I think that's all GW2 needs to do and then people will have less of a reason to complain.

@Village_Guy said:

then I think I'll stick with World of Warcraft where you need to do that and use more buttons that five...

Have fun with that. WoW PvP is a joke right now and has been for a long time, gear will win over skill unless you're truly terrible.

@selfconfessedcynic said:

I agree.

Man - I could stop there, I guess? I wouldn't be surprised if it comes out in November either.

It's always seemed obvious to me they aren't ready for release yet, and even November would appear optimistic.

@Village_Guy said:

I stopped paying attention to it after one of the high-up developers said that the melee classes were for hardcore gamers since casuals wouldn't be able to figure them out, because they had to use skills from First Person Shooters, which include using WASD to move, using the mouse to aim, and pressing keys 1-5.

If that is what they consider hardcore gameplay that casual players won't be able to figure out, then I think I'll stick with World of Warcraft where you need to do that and use more buttons that five...

I think that says more for your underestimation of just how casual the vast majority of the MMO community actually are than anything else.

@SeriouslyNow said:

Tera straight up tells you that close combat classes are harder to player than ranged. I think that's all GW2 needs to do and then people will have less of a reason to complain.

There are no close combat classes in GW2, only close combat weapons.

'Legitimately' broken stuff is going to be within the balance and mechanics economy of every MMORPG throughout its lifespan. If you've played them in earnest over the span of multiple years, classes always go from broken to overpowered to mechanically unfun and back again - it's always somewhat in-flux. It's just how it is with something as complex as a MMORPG.

As far as I know, Guild Wars 2 is truely feature complete and hence in Beta. They'll iron out as many PvE issues as they catch, tweak and rebalance some skills, maybe rework some class mechanics - and then they're gonna lauch the game in between late Summer and early Fall. Just for good measures. Diablo III comes out in a week. It went through major iterations of core system within the last 3 months. It's nothing out of the ordinary. There's just few developers sharing these facts with their community as openly as Blizzard or ArenaNet does.

No worries. Even if worst comes to worst, we'll still be playing every month during the inevitable BWE's leading up to release.

It really needs to be flawless and then some to get anywhere near the crazy high expectations people have for this game, so I guess the smart thing to do is take their time.  It's probably the most hyped up game (by gamers, not advertising) that I can remember, and they aren't going to get another shot at it if they screw it up.

The thing about beta forums and any sort of product reviews or complaints is that you get more people at the far end of the spectrum (hated thing, or loved thing) which is why they're complaining in the first place. People with no opinion or generally positive or negative probably wont say shit either way so I'd take the beta forums etc with a grain of salt. (vocal minority comes to mind)

That said, after playing the game I certainly don't think it's going to be out by the end of summer, but I'm optimistic that it will make the holidays. They themselves have said 2012, and to be fair we don't know how old that build of the game is.

Furthermore, they've managed to change fundamental mechanics (the energy system comes to mind) in weeks between public events and I wouldn't doubt that right now they're filling out the upper levels of content and ironing out the bugs in the lower level stuff.

The PvP isn't as unbalanced as some might have you believe, and having played every profession in PvP during the beta, I wouldn't have said the melee styles were any weaker than the casters/ranged styles or vice versa, just that there is a large gap in the amount of health the classes have meaning a more skilled player with an elementalist for example can wreak havoc rather easily on unsuspecting enemies. Conversely, a player using an elementalist with little knowledge of the class (like myself) wont properly use spells like ride the lightning and that static field, chilling effects etc to maintain distance from warriors and thieves, and quickly get ground into dust. Sure, there's a tonne of balancing to do, but I don't believe the changes to be made will be as fundamental as they have made them out to be.

The majority of complaints in PvP will simply be due to people not using their abilities when they are necessary because they haven't quite had enough time for them to become second nature.

The Guild Wars that officially released was substantially different from what it was 6 months later when I started playing apparently, according to friends that had bought on release. The Guild Wars that I was playing 6 months later was different in many balance and technical ways than when I first started playing. They will make improvements after launch, its how they do things.

Its not released yet so its not done. Not to mention that June 26th is the end of Quarter 2 and they could have just set that as the release to be optimistic.

I was always betting on late September at the earliest, even before the first BWE. I would rather they present the issues to the playerbase that bought the game and give a realistic view of what the state of the game is rather than ignore it.

Releasing it around the time when school starts isn't a great idea.

They also don't want to the hype to die down by waiting too long to release.

The game isn't so broken right now that it will take more than 2-3 months to fix IMO. Most of the issues simply relate to glitches (and there were lots of them). But I didn't notice too many broken gameplay mechanics. Most of the stuff that needed reworking was in PvE (like range vs. melee, speeding up EXP gain, scaling content, etc). All that is easy to fix because it doesn't affect competitive balance. PvP was surprisingly balanced. Very little needs to be done there IMO. Some classes/weapons need adjustment, but nothing huge.

A big problem during the beta was learning curves. Some classes simply take longer to learn than others. Thieves and elementalists for the most part were nothing more than free kills for me (I was playing guardian, which is one of the easiest classes to learn), but when you ran into a thief or elementalist that actually knew what they were doing, they were very dangerous.

I also think they could use the pre-purchase money to hire temporary programmers maybe to help out with fixing all the glitches.

@UssjTrunks:

Very true about the learning curve. Profession specific mechanics, as well as core design-wise, the importance and function of conditions. Traits and Runes. And so forth. A lot to wrap ones head around in a single weekend.

For example - one of the professions I played during BWE was the Ranger, a rather popular profession, yet very few actually 'got it', in terms of class mechanic. I read countless threads about 'squishy, useless, consistently dead pets', because most didn't understand that Rangers chose two pets out of a list of about thirty pets - each with a unique skill attached - and use them as a 'Tag Team', hotswapping them mid-combat (and 'dead' pets would be 'good to go' once the tag team cooldown is up). And them pets got everything. From fluff skills to snares to roots to freezes to dazes to blinds to heals to whatever you flippin' want. So few saw the Ranger for what he is - especially thanks to his class mechanic - wicked awesome and crazy powerful.

I guess class-specific tutorial quests could alleviate that. Then again, MMOs iterate and iterate, and what's true now now might not be true tomorrow, so tutorial quests kinda don't make much sense - and after proper release, there's ample time to learn the ins and outs of any profession anyways...

@Seppli said:

I guess class-specific tutorial quests could alleviate that. Then again, MMOs iterate and iterate, and what's true now now might not be true tomorrow, so tutorial quests kinda don't make much sense - and after proper release, there's ample time to learn the ins and outs of any profession anyways...

They really do need to revamp the game's tutorials. I would say that's my biggest problem at this point. That someone like me, who has read essentially everything about this game so far, can forget entirely about a couple of basic gameplay systems during the BWE does not bode well for newcomers. It also doubles as a kind of "shut the fuck up" to people who start playing and don't immediately see anything different from a typical MMO.

I'm betting mid-late July release. The game isn't fundamentally broken or anything, and a lot of what people seem to be complaining about seems to be more whining than a broken feature.

You know what? I'm not even going to venture a guess because the only thing I know is that I don't know. I have no idea what the range of bugs and changes is that they are dealing with. I have no idea how quickly they can deal with them. All I know is that the idea of them letting people pre-purchase the game hypothetically six months in advance, according to some of your release date guesses, seems like a very poor idea. Sure, they obviously already have all of those purchases/that money in the bag, but people are going to get annoyed. Plenty already are.

I just really hope that a holiday release isn't the case because college will have resumed by then and I won't have time to play. Breakin' my heart ArenaNet. I think this is the last time I get involved early on in following a game because it has been rough.

@Subjugation:

Dude - it's been 2 weeks... you need to get that monkey off your back.

@Seppli: I really truly wish I knew what you meant by that.

I say early next year. No way they can fix it this year. Most MMO's launch with issues but from the sound of it they will dig their graves if they release it this year with all those issues. It sucks because i really want it badly.

Just because they're admitting to be reworking core mechanics doesn't make them the only developers to actually do so. I'm confidant that every game ever made has been reworked countless times through alpha and beta tests. Games generally come out on time, I'm sure this will be no different.

@lavaman77 said:

I say early next year. No way they can fix it this year. Most MMO's launch with issues but from the sound of it they will dig their graves if they release it this year with all those issues. It sucks because i really want it badly.

It will be sometime in calendar 2012, they've promised as much. I wouldn't especially care if it wasn't, but it would be a massive PR disaster if (after accepting pre-purchases) they didn't release on-schedule.

@Dark_Lord_Spam: The calender 2012 promise is making me squeamish, the same way that BioWare promised SW:TOR for a 2011 release. December 20th was cutting it quite close to that 2011 mark, geez forget I even brought that up. Just made myself a sad panda : ( .

They can take as long as they want. It will let me time to finish the 3 campaign + Eyes of the north and get some pet/Miniature and elite skill and farm armor for my heroes and try/finish hard mode and,,, maybe eat/sleep/work between that.

So more time is what I need at the moment... :P

They can squash a lot of bugs in a couple of months, and games go through rebalancing right to the very last minute. It's normal.

Its an MMO, the balancing will never be done. But I have to agree, theres still a lot to be done. Hopefully their beta is actually effective and they can tweak things each month between the open beta events.

Biggest problem at the moment is ability delay, the same thing that messed up SWTOR for a lot of people, especially melee classes. If they can fix it before release, the game will be on its way to being a great PVP MMO.

@Beaudacious said:

Now when you add in the technical touches still needed for Guild Wars 2, I really don't see this releasing anytime before September at the earliest. I would probably say November, maybe December if they want to get out of the way of other major titles.

How does... June sound?

Not that GameStop is infalliable or anything, but that 6/26 date they're listing looks pretty reliable to me.

@Jeff: It's the original date that everyone is crossing their fingers for, it sounds reasonable, and I personally hope it's true. Although it's hard to say how much of that hope is being fulled by Gamestops placeholder/real release date, and that silly jersey consipracy from the Arenanet offices relating to the back end of June.

Of course no one really knows, everyone hopes for June, the Beta although quite polished has some large issues. Who knows? Maybe Arenanet are magical coding wizards/game designers, and are perfectly on track for June.

Edit: Unless that June suggestion is a disguised super secret insider knowledge bomb. * Sigh *

Is GW2 all that different from the rest? Will it do okay? Still feeling the burn that is TOR.

@Beaudacious: But they can't get that done by June. I've played quite a few MMOs in the beta stage, and I can tell if GW2 tries to push for a June release date, it will fall not only into the trap of "MMOs launch broken" but could be worse as well. While I've only worked solo on optimizing code (I'm a CS Major) and don't know how long it takes a team to do so, I can tell you that it's going to take a long while for them to get the optimization issues out of the way alone, much less all the other issues.

They could, however, get enough servers to launch in June if they wanted.

@Funkydupe: It doesn't stray too far from the typical MMO formula but makes a lot of changes for the better (in my opinion) and puts a big focus on skill, rather than grinding/time spent playing/level and gear. The whole player ego thing takes a huge kick to the crotch, which will upset some, since you can't really hang around just showing off how "l33t" you are. The position based combat, dynamic events, lack of a dedicated healer class and real co-operative quests are the big things though.

I felt the first game was more or less designed for people who hate WoW and this is pretty much the same deal, but on a much bigger scale.

@Funkydupe: I got out of TOR before my wallet got burnt, GW2 is a product that would of justified/satisfied your TOR hopes. At least that's what i think : D .

@isnipeyoudie: Problem is no one has any information, is the BWE client the latest and greatest version? A lot of optimization lag seems to be cause by the game only using a single CPU core. Is that simply due to them disabling multi-core support for easier BWE analysis ? If so then really the game would be fairly optimized, it's just being botle-necked by developers. Maybe the game is suppose to run one core, but is being bogged down by the debug client, and it simply needs a little polish along side removing the debug client.

Also you have to remember that they probably have separate teams only working on specific issues from optimization, general bugs, profession balance, content generation etc...

@Village_Guy: kind of a terrible point you make. The dev meant you need to be moving and dodging. Combat is dynamic and less pure-stat based as compared to WoW. Melee classes in WoW are basically two bars of skills, and that's just silly. I'd rather replace a bunch of the stupid defensive skills with movement based defense.

That's saddening. ):

I want to make my Snow Leopard Charr kitty. For every delay they give to the game I will steal one fish from a baby seal. I have spoken!

@Beaudacious: Most of the optimization issue on my end wasn't it only using one CPU core- in fact, it was using all 8 of mine equally. What I did notice was that there was a very poor GPU utilization and a lot of draw functions that weren't optimized and had too many ALU calls (in particular, water seemed to be egregiously demanding). I don't know what to say about whether or not that was the latest build they had though... I would find it strange if they gave us a month old build to test, however, since that's what they wanted us to do- test.