PvE = 4/5

Pros: Loved the shear scope of the world. Absolutely beautiful. I loved how exploring also gave you EXP. It really encouraged you to explore every corner of the map (and it was well worth it).

Cons: Some of the hearts felt quite grindy though, which I wasn't too thrilled about. I also didn't detect the slightest semblance of a storyline lol (although I didn't go beyond level 14).

PvP = 5/5

Pros: By far my favourite part of the game. There was definitely a learning curve associated with the combat. However, once you got it down, you could hang with anyone. Lot's of different roles to fill. I wasn't sure how the no trinity system would work, but I ended it up absolutely loving it.

Cons: There are certainly some balance issues to work out (namely engineers being too weak), but aside from that, I didn't find anything wrong with it.

WvW = NA

Only played for a few minutes.

PvE= 5/5

PvP= NA

Did some training but no actual combat

WvW= NA

Haven't done any of it

PvE = 5/5
-What can you even say about the environments.  All starting locations were amazing and the surrounding areas were great, filled with lots of interesting tasks to complete or just explore. Since I just love wandering around I loved that there wasn't a firm structure to the questing.
 
PvP = 4/5
-Not bad, but I wasn't able to play with the guild since my comp is so outdated is shit the bed in PvP and WvW.  So everyone was unorganized and there is nothing I hate more than an unorganized group in PvP
 
WvW = 4/5
-Great fun but my comp had troubles like PvP, preferred WvW over PvP.  Though I can't really make any firm statements until I upgrade my comp.

Worldbuilding 10/10 - 'bestes there is'

...too tired to be coherent about all the other stuff, but I'll name all the things I didn't like. ALL of them.

• Can't simply toggle autoattack on and off by pushing 1
• Can't set music on endless loop
• Can't lvl-up in matched instanced PvP

Everything else I loved, or at least liked, minus some of the itty gritty class mechanics and skills and such, but that's part of the fascination with MMOs. Definitely the best put together MMO world to date. Guild Wars 2 is the next Gold Standard.

The time I've spent with this game has been the most enjoyable MMO experience I've ever had. I'm an RPG fan but MMOs have never been able to keep my interest for more than 40 hours ish for some reason. Guild Wars 2 however seems like a game I can sink time into, at least as much as a solid lengthy single player RPG.

PvE = 4/5 - Aside from the pretty obvious things like the gorgeous art and environment design, I particularly like that they gave the grind some context and variety (by way of those heart quests and the dynamic events) instead of you having to randomly attack things that are around, although you can still do that. One of the cons that's most apparent to me is the balancing: somehow if I have other people in my party the personal quest lines become much much harder to do than if I were alone. But I'm guessing they're still tweaking this for the release and will probably continue to do so after.

PvP/WvW=3/5 - I've never been a big fan of PvP so can't say too much about it other than it's pretty enjoyable although that's not where I'm going to spend most of my time in. The only other PvP experience I've had in an MMO was in Warhammer Online, and they seemed to be comparable although I liked Warhammer Online's style of constant PvP where the results are more apparent even to people not doing PvP (like being cut off from a town since it's taken over by the opposing faction).

3/5 Environments and music are outstanding and filled with nostalgia. Pretty much everything else needs work.

5/5

I loved pretty much every aspect of the game and unlike others, I wasn't plagued with bad frame rates or lag at all. Although the game is clearly still totally unoptimised. The few complaints I have with the game are purely issues with it still being in beta.. Playing in groups was annoying at times, as your group could be separated into different overflow servers, which I think was because the lack of guesting at the moment.

It was also hard to really get a feel for the dynamic events, since there was always so many people. Many didn't have a noticeable affect on the world, because they rarely failed and in some cases, they scaled up to become far too difficult because of the amount of people, level 4 bosses scaled up to level 10 can easily one shot you. Once the population spreads out a bit, this shouldn't really be a problem though.

I did see a few good examples, such as the event where you have to stop bandits from contaminating the water supply in Shaemoor. If you fail it, the area becomes polluted and filled with a "toxic ooze" enemy. Killing them meant the workers could come back and fix the pipes, resetting the event. It's a MUCH more engaging questing system than other MMO's have and it remained fun going through the same few areas, doing the same ones over and over. There's a decent vairery and a feeling of what you're doing is actually having an impact on the world.

I also love the sense of teamwork. Everyone can work together to complete events, without the need to form parties or even communicate with one an other. Other people being around don't detract from the experience and they can't steal your loot or objectives. It's almost hard to believe this is the first MMO to get that right, but it's great.

Framerate = Shit/5

4/5

I can't say I loved my experience this weekend, but the game is undeniably of quality. The dynamic event system is nothing short of a revelation in this genre. It was significantly more fun to simply wade into the thick of an event, rather than collect quests at a quest hub.

It's great that players can help each other without needing to specifically group up. I rarely was doing something by myself.

I had trouble always finding level-appropriate content to do. Often I would hang back in areas I had already leveled past, repeating events over and over (*cough*grinding*cough*), until I'd level. They spread the personal story too thin.

It was fun to experiment with different weapon setups. As a guardian, I probably used a greatsword the most, but sword&shield and sword&torch were fun too.

The weakest aspect of the game is its storytelling. My Norn's personal story was really boring, and the greater event system doesn't tell much of a narrative. Especially after having played SWTOR to 50, it's like GW2 isn't even trying.

Overall, I'm walking away from the beta knowing I didn't waste $60. I'm definitely taking a character to 80 once the game goes live.

@Floppypants said:

I had trouble always finding level-appropriate content to do. Often I would hang back in areas I had already leveled past, repeating events over and over (*cough*grinding*cough*), until I'd level. They spread the personal story too thin.

I heard a lot of people say this, but I was consistently about four or five levels ahead of the content (thank Balthazar for down-scaling). It might be prudent to fully explore a major city if you find yourself behind, because that seems to net you the majority of a level. Otherwise, just try not to skip any dynamic events if they're reasonably close to you.

@Floppypants said:

I had trouble always finding level-appropriate content to do. Often I would hang back in areas I had already leveled past, repeating events over and over (*cough*grinding*cough*), until I'd level. They spread the personal story too thin.

I had a similar issue, but that was probably due to the fact that I only really had the opportunity to do heart quests since dynamic events were done before I could get there due to the massive volume of players. I also came to the same conclusion as you in regard to my $60 being well spent. Now that I've had a taste, I even more hungry than before.

My only real gripe that is somewhat warranted would be that the branch of the Norn personal story I ended up on wasn't particularly engrossing from the small portion (first 17 levels) I experienced. I'm not going to fault the game for things to be expected from a beta like the bugs/frame rate etc.

PvE/PvP/WvW were honestly all 4.5-5/5 in my book. Just great, honestly.

6/7

I enjoyed it immensely. Although there were a few problems that I had with the game, mainly the targeting system. In Guild Wars, it was pretty simple to just C + Space to get the closest enemy, or click on a healer if that was the priority. There is a 'target closest foe' key in GW2, but it didn't seem to work the way GW1 did. Another little nit pick is that there's no medium map. There's the little map, and the big map, but I'm used to pressing U and getting that medium map.

Both of these things are really minor, and I'll get used to them not being there, but it was just weird playing a game similar to GW, and those things not being present.

Highlight of the beta for me was finding old lion's arch under the water. Swimming down and seeing that fountain and steps was just so awesome. Gameplay wise, the best thing was WvW. Defending castles, attaking supply points, all out brawls in the middle of nowhere, it was amazing to play.

Oh cool - it's awesome to see everyone's ideas. I was really happy with what I saw.

I played a Norn Necromancer and a Charr Guardian to about lvl 10 each in addition to a Human Warrior to about level 4 (and a couple more after that in WvW). All in all, I really like the PvE in guild wars 2.

PvE = 4/5

• The Dynamic Events are an awesome idea, incredibly well executed - but where a little hit and miss
  - The larger event chains are consistently awesome and sometimes truly spectacular (especially when they end in a gigantic boss fight - I give a long example near the end of The Lincolncast)
  - The smaller dynamic events, at least in the beta, just didn't hold up. In most of these cases it was because they either repeated way too often (like champion creature event spawns) or got clogged with players (to the point of my having to walk around and around a cave in order to rub grawl carvings from its walls enough times to complete the event)
  - The off-kilter events were superb. For example, there is a hilarious one in the mountains near the norn starting area where a crazy woman leads you on a merry chase for an imaginary creature that she firmly believes exists.
• The personal story was rather hit and miss as well...
  - The opening event leading to a boss fight was rather short in all three starting areas, and seemed to lack depth
  - The characters seemed... meh - I never got particularly attached to any of them. Even the NPC "friends" the game generates for you are boring and only appear a couple of times.
  - Sometimes the events were pretty fun and challenging though, like holding off a Minotaur attack on a train of Dolyaks solo at like lvl 4. BUT...
  - Perhaps the saving grace, you can actually do the personal story stuff with mates as long as you're partied up (I thought they were solo only). I had a great time with @Tarkhein and @Chavtheworld doing some Charr personal story stuff in a couple of different permutations together. Particularly fun was a sneaking mission where they turn you invisible - Chav and Tark went about all sneaky like while I jumped up and down right between the NPCs holding a big metal rod I'd picked up somewhere : P - oh, and breaking cinematics is fun.
• The actual moment to moment gameplay in PvE is great.
  - I actually got a buttery smooth gaming experience with GW2 (95% of the time), so with dodging, swinging my sword and targetting. all of that worked great even in the heat of a boss fight (again, we discuss this in The Lincolncast).
  - The class balance seems good - my Necromancer did things his way, my Guardian his and my warrior just decimated everything in front of him. Seriously, if you're a fan of dishing out damage try Warrior out some time - I could take on 3 (normal) lvl 5s at the same time with my lvl 4 Warrior using either a bow or a rifle, no problemo.
  - On that point though, I have to say that ranged is the way to go both in general at low levels and during larger dynamic events / WvW.

Structured PvP = 4/5

• I didn't get too much of this done during the weekend, and when I did it felt like noobs-only-hour
• The class balance seems fine, though again my Rifle Warrior just messed fools up (on my first try ever I came second ffs - though, to be fair, I focussed on doing objectives rather than killing people)
• I actually fell for a Mesmer's illusions once, so that was pretty interesting
• With the lower player count, I always had excellent framerates so the gameplay was once again dead on.

World vs World = 5/5

• AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING
• *Breathes* I'll talk about this a bunch more on the next Lincolncast if I can get people together for it, but in short...
  - If you pay attention to what does what, it is incredibly deep and engrossing
  - If you know when to quit on a particular battle, your time expenditure gets far more lucrative, and again, shit gets awesome
  - Levelling up is hella slow unless you concentrate on taking areas and completing objectives rather than killing dudes
  (note, I got smooth framerates in WvW 80% of the time - and the lowest it got was 12-15 fps, so I didn't have the problems a lot of people had here)

Overall... well, I can't give it a 5/5 because there is a hell of a lot wrong with it at the moment - I would give it 4.5/5, but to stick with current conventions...

4/5.

What an amazing gaming experience, I spent the entire weekend in awe and sleep deprived, RL is gonna take a hit when this one comes out lol

PvE-4/5

PvP-4/5

WvW-4/5

(I always like to leave room for improvement, otherwise would be straight 5/5's)

Cheers Arena.Net well done

@selfconfessedcynic said:

On that point though, I have to say that ranged is the way to go both in general at low levels and during larger dynamic events / WvW.

I saw this too. Some events were suicide for my Guardian. Several bosses had abilities that would 1-shot everyone within melee range, while being virtually harmless to anyone standing at range. Sometimes being the one melee character to attack a group of enemies, while everyone else stands back shooting, would just cause me to be focus fired to death.

I created a female norn. Fucking hate the voice actor, and the personal story is really hard to be invested in. Kind of a bummer.

All in all, I had a bit of a hard time getting into the game. I realize it's a great MMO, I just haven't gotten past the fact that it plays just like an MMO. The way skills work and are earned is cool, but everything about the dynamics of movement rubs me the wrong way, as well as the sheer amount of shit that happens on screen. It felt like I died without knowing why way too many times during this beta.

It's another fantasy MMO.. Enough said.

@Liber said:

Framerate = Shit/5

Basically this, regardless of settings used. PC can run Witcher 2 on High settings just fine.

@CaLe: Of all the things GW2 is doing, that's really all you have to say about it?

By the time they fixed their accounts/error 21 issues, it was Sunday afternoon for me, so didn't exactly get to play much of it. But from what I did (2 characters, no PVP) I really enjoyed what I saw.

The diversity of skills/spells, how the dynamic events work, story missions, and just the all around feel of the controls, all really well done. Hell, even my framerate was solid all the way through on my 3+ years old PC. Except for that end of beta event which eventually just crashed my game, but a Legendary White Rabbit would do that I imagine.

Here's to hoping I'll get to play for more than a couple of hours on the next beta.

@selfconfessedcynic said:

• - Perhaps the saving grace, you can actually do the personal story stuff with mates as long as you're partied up (I thought they were solo only). I had a great time with @Tarkhein and @Chavtheworld doing some Charr personal story stuff in a couple of different permutations together. Particularly fun was a sneaking mission where they turn you invisible - Chav and Tark went about all sneaky like while I jumped up and down right between the NPCs holding a big metal rod I'd picked up somewhere : P - oh, and breaking cinematics is fun.

Ahahah I wish I had footage of you totally ruining that stealth mission, was great! I thought it would get us discovered, but it totally had no effect haha. Until the end when we all jumped when it went into combat.

But, breaking cinematics you say?

There's a video for that :D

@UssjTrunks said:

Cons: There are certainly some balance issues to work out (namely engineers being too weak), but aside from that, I didn't find anything wrong with it.

Really? I played Engineer all weekend and I found myself wrecking fools in PVP . The problem with the Engineers is that they have so much choice for skills that you can easily miss the bigger picture, take all of the coolest ones and be left a bit out of sorts. If you take 3 turrets and the wrench kit however, you can plant yourself in a capture point and really hold your own, easily against one and with skill you can hold off two without taking too much hurt.

PvE - 4/5 - Needs some bugfixing work and some better content scaling. Some events are impossible without a certain number of people, and some of those really should be soloable (I'm looking at you, Plains of Ashford skillpoints).

PvP - 4/5 - PvP is a bit unbalanced for some builds; maybe this is just a skill gap disparity. It felt like some classes had a bit too much of an overspecialization, to the point of crippling themselves. My Guardian NEVER died, but in terms of actually killing someone? I was practially useless.

Environment - 5/5 - GW1 was the only MMO that actually managed to make me care about the lore and world, and GW2 does for the same reason, but DAMN did they build an amazing world. Not only that, there's hidden shit everywhere. My group would often just explore meaningless caves and areas just because they were awesome to explore.

WvW- 4/5 - Once they fix the optimization stuff so I can do something in fights with >20 people, and make it so leveling here is as fast as PvE (I got 20 levels in the first day for PvE, but not even close to that in the same time in WvW) along with good gear drops/kill sharing, this is a straight 5/5.

I know some of those observations are reliant upon the fact that it's a beta, but I'm looking at the game as it exists right now. That doesn't mean that I don't expect that those issues will be fixed, and I'm going to play the shit out of this game when it releases. I don't think I'll play nearly as much on the next few beta weekends, however; I put around 44 hours into this one, got to level 35 at the last few moments, and need a large amount of sleep.

3.5/5

All I did was PVE and spent the majority of my time in the Plains of Ashford just wandering around. It felt a bit aimless but I wanted to get 100% in that area because I thought it spawned a chest with awesome goodies. It didn't spawn a chest it instead sent me a piece of mail with a couple silver,some ingots and a pretty nice staff...that was LVL 26 I was level 15 when I got it >.< . Hopefully they fix that in the futre. The PVE experience was good once you got past the early areas with all the zerging going on. Some of the events felt a little unbalanced there was a Charr Shaman by a lake and despite him being 1 Charr and there being roughly 25 of us there he was constantly one shotting us. That said it was a bit chaotic so seeing where is AOE spells were was a bit hard.

Overall I can't wait for the next BWE and will be screwing around with a theif the most.

@MrMazz said:

3.5/5

All I did was PVE and spent the majority of my time in the Plains of Ashford just wandering around. It felt a bit aimless but I wanted to get 100% in that area because I thought it spawned a chest with awesome goodies. It didn't spawn a chest it instead sent me a piece of mail with a couple silver,some ingots and a pretty nice staff...that was LVL 26 I was level 15 when I got it >.< . Hopefully they fix that in the futre. The PVE experience was good once you got past the early areas with all the zerging going on. Some of the events felt a little unbalanced there was a Charr Shaman by a lake and despite him being 1 Charr and there being roughly 25 of us there he was constantly one shotting us. That said it was a bit chaotic so seeing where is AOE spells were was a bit hard.

Overall I can't wait for the next BWE and will be screwing around with a theif the most.

That's because he has a damage reflecting shield up most of the time, and there's no easy way to turn off your auto-attack in that build we played. You owned yourself. The dude is perfectly tankable, as long as you got the cooldowns to support yourself. Of course tanking works way differently in GW2. Everybody has to do it, for as long as you can, then back out.

But yes, some encounters seem to scale too much, and that shaman is one of 'em. It's generally on the tough side in comparison to most MMOs out there. Playing socially is made so easy though - there's literally no barrier at all - I guess comparatively high difficulty is cohesive with their core concepts.

PvE 4/5 -

I ran into this issue a lot, I would complete all of the world events and help all the villagers then when I try to progress through the story it would tell me I was underlevelled. I think things need to be scaled a little bit better.

PvP 5/5 -

Very fun however two days wasn't nearly enough time to explore this fully. I played elementalist and mesmer. Ele had a far steeper learning curve than I was expecting, switching between stances at the right times is challenging. It is probably just a skill issue but I was finding that the melee classes were blowing me up on ele extremely quickly with little effort, however this has been the same in any mmo where I have played a mage.

5/5 Shit was baller all around. My only complaint is that the menu, top left menu needs more options. Going through 3 layers of menu to get to specific things is quite annoying.

This game needs to be released asap, i feel like i was given a free sample of some new drug, and now am being starved to drive up my willingness to pay.

@Jimi said:

PvE 4/5 -

I ran into this issue a lot, I would complete all of the world events and help all the villagers then when I try to progress through the story it would tell me I was underlevelled. I think things need to be scaled a little bit better.

Content-wise, leveling is perfectly fine (remember, leveling is supposed to be flat and not progressive, time consumption-wise). In the full game, there are going to be 5x lvl 1-15 zones (there were already three in the beta). There's even a tooltip on a loading screen, telling players to visit other races' starter zones. Since you could be lvl 79 and still have a good time playing starter zones (and gaining XP towards lvl 80), due to player levels scaling down, it's not a content issue, but rather a perception issue.

If you want stick to your race's starter zone, you'll just have to hang around some more. There's always more dynamic events that will pop up inadvertently, which aren't immediatly apparent. Of you can opt to buy an XP boost from the gem shop (you can do so with in-game gold, if you wish to do so). Funny thing about the gems - the more gems players buy with IRL money, the cheaper the in-game gold price gets for them, because players trade their gems against player gold. Gold does not get generated by the gems, only by players actually playing the game. Just another stroke of genius.

@Jimi said:

PvP 5/5 -

Very fun however two days wasn't nearly enough time to explore this fully. I played elementalist and mesmer. Ele had a far steeper learning curve than I was expecting, switching between stances at the right times is challenging. It is probably just a skill issue but I was finding that the melee classes were blowing me up on ele extremely quickly with little effort, however this has been the same in any mmo where I have played a mage.

Did you go into traits and did you customize your gear with runes? Default traits and runes for many classes didn't emphasize on survivabilty.

I found that speccing into vitality and toughness, and socketing survivability runes into my PvP gear (like Runes of the Dolyak - giving vitality and toughness and a health regeneration setbonus), did make a world of difference. You can respecc infinitely in the Mists and the vanilla-looking PvP weapons and all runes are free of charge (guessing that'll stay that way in the full game too).

My mesmer and ranger were pushovers too, until I gave them a make-over.