official Guild Wars 2

[Shaun N.]

That video got me interested enough to write Arena.Net a letter and shoot them my beta testing resume to see if they need more alpha/beta testers.

Wish me luck gang, if I get in I'll report back.

I'd be interested in hearing if you get anywhere with it

[Pupik]

I'd be interested in hearing if you get anywhere with it

I doubt it. But hey, at least he tried.

[spacer]

GW2 looks good so far. Hopefully they can deliver on their promises. I played the original, but never finished it. It did get boring after while. Hopefully this "dynamic events" system they describe will fix the boredom issue.

I'm more looking forward to SWTOR though. That one seems like it's going to be amazing.

[Minifig]

I'd be interested in hearing if you get anywhere with it

I doubt it. But hey, at least he tried.

That's part of why I thought I'd try, if you guys haven't seen my resume:

MMO's played: Aion, Auto Assault, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, Asheron's Call 2, Champions Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dark Age of Camelot, Dofus, Dragonica, Dungeons & Dragons Online, Dungeon Runners, Eve Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Final Fantasy XI, Free Realms, Guild Wars, LEGO: Universe, Lineage, Lineage II, The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, Tabula Rasa, MapleStory, The Matrix Online, Priston Tale, RF Online, RuneScape, Star Wars Galaxies, Ultima Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, World of Warcraft and it's two expansions (and soon to be third).

Of the listed games above I have beta tested / quality controlled:

Aion, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Champions Online, Chronicles of Spellborn, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, LEGO: Universe, The Matrix Online, Star Trek: Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade.

Each of these games I have played to at least level 25, and have spent more than three weeks in game. Some of these aforementioned (World of Warcraft in particular) I have been playing or played for years. I have been playing World of Warcraft for six years.

Games that are not MMO that I have participated in the Beta or Alpha:

Starcraft 2 (Beta) , Age of Empires: Online (Alpha upto Release).

[Guest]

You need to beta test RL imo. :D

[Sethos]

SK[' date=20 August 2010 - 17:44' timestamp='1282319047' post='593054334]

You need to beta test RL imo. :D

[Minifig]

SK[' date=20 August 2010 - 11:44' timestamp='1282319047' post='593054334]

You need to beta test RL imo. :D

Actually.. I go out and bike for 4 1/2 miles every morning. :)

[SkyDX]

SK[' date=20 August 2010 - 17:44' timestamp='1282319047' post='593054334]

You need to beta test RL imo. :D

Why should he bother? The only great thing are the graphics. The gameplay sucks and if you character dies your access to it will be revoked. Plus it's a DAMN long grind most of the time.... :rolleyes:

[Blackhearted]

GC 2010 presentation demo: http://www.jeuxonline.info/video/2723/gamescom-2010-presentation-demo-guild-wars-2

Looks amazing and so far, I really like what they're doing with the game. Not that I was against them (the new features) upon reading, but it's just amazing to see how good it actually works in gameplay.

I agree. It looks quite awesome in that video. The game just can't come out soon enough.

[Firethorne]

It looks promising, but I'm still on the fence. I loved what GW1 started as, and ended up very disappointed by what it became. Prophecies was sold with the promise that the series was not about grind or time spent playing. Then Factions introducted allegiences you had to join and grind for to proceed through the game. Then Nightfall added big endgame stat boots for grinding. Eye of the north, overpowered skills for grinding. I could accept the things like the drunkard title ]SK[ mentioned. If someone was insane enough to waste an entire week of their life double clicking on booze icons, it at least didn't give them any advantage over people who had a life outside the game. But, slowly and surely, grind became the required norm.

I also liked playing all of the classes, but it got to the point whenever I logged on to one of my secondary characters, I got this nagging feeling that I should be tyring to get more titles on my main. It just sucked all the fun out of it. Thats when I quit GW, and I'm glad I haven't gone back. If I knew they'd go back to their roots and go back to what I thought made Prophecies so great, I'd get GW2 in a second. But I don't trust Arenanet to not make Guild Wars into Grind Wars again.

[chrismgtis]

Actually.. I go out and bike for 4 1/2 miles every morning. :)

So about 12 minutes of bike riding? :p Assuming, since I was doing 15 minutes of riding (about ~6 miles) when I had a Rush membership recently.

Get out moar.

Hehe, I don't get out much myself either here lately.

[spacer]

So, after watching several gameplay videos from gamescom over at gametrailers, I have to say that I wasn't impressed.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-10-guild-wars-2/703345

The core gameplay looks solid enough, but the writing and voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. Especially after seeing what Bioware has been doing with SWTOR.

[Emn1ty]

So, after watching several gameplay videos from gamescom over at gametrailers, I have to say that I wasn't impressed.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/gc-10-guild-wars-2/703345

The core gameplay looks solid enough, but the writing and voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. Especially after seeing what Bioware has been doing with SWTOR.

I would take bad voice acting over no voice acting any day. I'm am so tired of walls of text that I don't even bother reading them in games anymore and as a result I miss out on much of the universe.

[treemonster]

I would take bad voice acting over no voice acting any day. I'm am so tired of walls of text that I don't even bother reading them in games anymore and as a result I miss out on much of the universe.

before long we'll be skipping over teh voice acting too in these games.

i'm kinda disspointed to find out that there won't be any world pvp in the game. there is something called world vs world pvp which sounds alot like wow's av but on a bigger scale. and people seem to see this and think it means world pvp but it has nothing in common with what the mmo playing world knows as world pvp.

[Nagisan]

i'm kinda disspointed to find out that there won't be any world pvp in the game.

Good, it means I won't be camped by people 3x my level.

In all honesty, world PVP would be hard to do in GW in a sense. They would have to make it so you do not easily attack another person because there is no good and bad side (as far as player characters go), but they could make it like some other MMOs where you can force your character to attack another player. They would also have to add in a punishment system IMO to prevent abuse of high levels camping lower level areas just to kill and disrupt people they have no trouble beating.

I am all for PvP in a structured manner, but I hate games like WoW where you can just be running along questing, then suddenly get ganked by someone 20 levels higher than you with NOTHING you can do about it, and NO punishment for them doing it. Quick way to ruin a decent MMO IMO.

[treemonster]

personally i love having to pay attention to my surrounding so that if a high level comes through ganking people i need to run in advance. getting ganked now and then really has very little impact on exp per hour, especially if you're already playing casually and taking your time.

i also like responding to calls for help from lower level players and guarding them while they grind.

a penalty/restriction system(for example lineage 2's) has pro's and con's. an alternative is pve only and pvp flagged servers. though niether system stops people from carebearing it up in so called pvp game or from rolling on pvp flagged servers in wow and raging a every time they get run into world pvp and spending hours upon hours of their time on the forums and in global chat saying pvp only belongs instances and world pvpers should be blacklisted and mass reported until they are banned and so on and so forth.

i don't want people like you on my pvp server anyway tbh. but at least give me and people like me the option to world pvp. although they failed in teh end, warhammer online and aoc both sold a tonne of boxes on the hopes it would be the next world pvp game. in aoc people world pvped all the way to 80 like mad and ignored instances because they gave no reward worth spending the time in them, and in WAR people only did world pvp at end game because the faction were seperated by useless pvp lakes and scenarios were too rewarding to waste time doing pve at all.

having multiple server types along these lines easy pretty easy and cheap to do, and it doesn't affect the structured/instanced pvp at all.

[Emn1ty]

What needs to be done is PvP areas. While I wouldn't mind a PvP system like EVE's where PvP is possible anywhere but doing so in a high security sector gets you screwed regardless of level, that system doesn't always work out. What could work in a similar way is have security ranges and ratings for different cities. The closer you are to a higher rating city, the likelier chance you'll have the city gaurd come out and quell any violence, etc. That kind of system would keep PvP in known areas that have a risk vs. reward aspect to the questing.

Still, as it looks, Guild Wars 2 seems to be far more PvE based anyways and due to that structure, PvP should be reserved to either certain systems or between Guilds.

[Nagisan]

personally i love having to pay attention to my surrounding so that if a high level comes through ganking people i need to run in advance. getting ganked now and then really has very little impact on exp per hour, especially if you're already playing casually and taking your time.

It depends, if you are a rogue or a class that can easily hide from enemies then your right, it has very little impact on exp per hour. But if you are a class that is more likely to die to that higher level, then you can lose a good 10-15 minutes to a higher level that is picking on you (that includes travelling back to your body and what not).

i also like responding to calls for help from lower level players and guarding them while they grind.

I can understand that, but generally (from my own experience at least) cries of help come from people being camped by 2 or more people. They also do not typically happen in areas that I am off leveling in or hanging out in, which makes it less likely for me to see cries for help. I use to actually multibox with a high level character following my lower level, so if someone did come along I at least had some protection using my higher lvl.

a penalty/restriction system(for example lineage 2's) has pro's and con's. an alternative is pve only and pvp flagged servers. though niether system stops people from carebearing it up in so called pvp game or from rolling on pvp flagged servers in wow and raging a every time they get run into world pvp and spending hours upon hours of their time on the forums and in global chat saying pvp only belongs instances and world pvpers should be blacklisted and mass reported until they are banned and so on and so forth.

I can agree with that, I personally feel there could be a near-perfect penalty system for ganking, basically have an acceptable level limit so if someone kills someone that is 20 levels lower then them, they get punished UNLESS that person is attacking or has attacked recently another person. But if the higher level is within 5 levels or so (maybe less) of the person they are attacking, there is no punishment because they are generally close enough in level at that point that the lower level could possibly win. And I can agree with PvE and PvP servers, as I would gladly stay off of PvP servers, but having 2 servers for every area splits the community in half (potentially at least), meaning there will be that many LESS players on either server due to the option. What it needs is a sort of PvP system that you enable or disable a PvP flag in ALL areas (except designated PvP areas), and with that flag enabled you can attack other people with their flag enabled, but not people with their flag disabled. If your flag is disabled you cannot attack players with their flag also disabled, and you can attack players with their flag enabled, but doing so instantly enables your flag. Sort of like how WoW works, but ALL areas respect the PvP flag settings, not just friendly areas to that player.

i don't want people like you on my pvp server anyway tbh. but at least give me and people like me the option to world pvp. although they failed in teh end, warhammer online and aoc both sold a tonne of boxes on the hopes it would be the next world pvp game. in aoc people world pvped all the way to 80 like mad and ignored instances because they gave no reward worth spending the time in them, and in WAR people only did world pvp at end game because the faction were seperated by useless pvp lakes and scenarios were too rewarding to waste time doing pve at all.

having multiple server types along these lines easy pretty easy and cheap to do, and it doesn't affect the structured/instanced pvp at all.

Understandable, but I wouldn't want to play on a PvP server so you wouldn't have to worry about me being on it. The main issue with multiple servers covering the same area is it divides the community, so if you have a fairly small region that has say, 20,000 players, the second you split the server to PvE and PvP, each servers population gets cut but a large amount. I think keeping them all in one server but having a sort of rule system for world PvP helps keep all the players together, while not forcing anyone into the PvP aspect.

[treemonster]

pve and pvp flagged servers split the community no more than just having multiple servers at all. by that reasoning there shouldn't be RP flagged servers which need special rulesets and stronger GM presences to enforce them, or any other kind of ruleset server that people ask for.

in lineage 2 the pvp worked like this: you flagged on a player by attacking them. if you killed them before they flagged on you by attacking you back you went red. which meant anyone could attack you without flagging. if you PKed 5 or more people like this, all at once or over time, you would have a decent chance of dropping an item you had equipped or in your inventory. to remove PKs you had to grind a special pet and you got no exp for your toon while you had it summoned. for 5 pks you usually had to level at least two of them to get back to 0. grinding off one PK usually took a couple hours, more PKs took more time.

clan wars when both clan accepted reduced exp loss from pvp to 1% from 4%(which was alot at higher levels)

ofc then you had people that ran their mouths and wouldn't flag, or clans that wouldn' accept the war until you had spent a great time PKing their members for full exp loss until they accepted or quit the game and even more time spent grinding off the red and the PK count pets.

and 10-15 minutes isn't much time at all, even though i think in wow now GY runs are like at most 30seconds-2minutes, and spawn areas aroun dyour corpse are more than enough to get away from corpse campers. i've had people try to corpse camp me on my mage and i had no problems getting away from them.

special pvp areas never work, because people never go into them, especially once they have the rewards from them. hell in WAR they increased exp and renown from forts substantially but still no one did them before end game because they were still crap exp per hour vs scenarios.

the eve system might work if guards were ever truly effective at doing more than urging people to run to them every time they came across pvp instead of fighting back. they have to either insta gib people to be effective or be killable and useless for their purpose. i'm not sure how high sec space in eve works, but from what i understand the e famous goon fleet had groups of 50 people in free ships doing suicide runs on people in teh "safe" areas with players dedicated to collecting the loot after.

[Nagisan]

pve and pvp flagged servers split the community no more than just having multiple servers at all. by that reasoning there shouldn't be RP flagged servers which need special rulesets and stronger GM presences to enforce them, or any other kind of ruleset server that people ask for.

True, but I do not think we need separate RP servers either....if people want to RP then simply do it and ignore the people who aren't playing along. I think if your going to have multiple servers, you need to allow people to easily switch between them.

in lineage 2 the pvp worked like this: you flagged on a player by attacking them. if you killed them before they flagged on you by attacking you back you went red. which meant anyone could attack you without flagging. if you PKed 5 or more people like this, all at once or over time, you would have a decent chance of dropping an item you had equipped or in your inventory. to remove PKs you had to grind a special pet and you got no exp for your toon while you had it summoned. for 5 pks you usually had to level at least two of them to get back to 0. grinding off one PK usually took a couple hours, more PKs took more time.

clan wars when both clan accepted reduced exp loss from pvp to 1% from 4%(which was alot at higher levels)

ofc then you had people that ran their mouths and wouldn't flag, or clans that wouldn' accept the war until you had spent a great time PKing their members for full exp loss until they accepted or quit the game and even more time spent grinding off the red and the PK count pets.

and 10-15 minutes isn't much time at all, even though i think in wow now GY runs are like at most 30seconds-2minutes, and spawn areas aroun dyour corpse are more than enough to get away from corpse campers. i've had people try to corpse camp me on my mage and i had no problems getting away from them.

Thats a good system IMO as it heavily punishes people for killing someone who does not want to PvP. It still allows world PvP, but punishes you for doing so.

special pvp areas never work, because people never go into them, especially once they have the rewards from them. hell in WAR they increased exp and renown from forts substantially but still no one did them before end game because they were still crap exp per hour vs scenarios.

the eve system might work if guards were ever truly effective at doing more than urging people to run to them every time they came across pvp instead of fighting back. they have to either insta gib people to be effective or be killable and useless for their purpose. i'm not sure how high sec space in eve works, but from what i understand the e famous goon fleet had groups of 50 people in free ships doing suicide runs on people in teh "safe" areas with players dedicated to collecting the loot after.

The problem with special PvP areas is it encourages fair fights or (at the very least) fighting people your own level and people who want to be there. From my own experience, probably 90% of world PvPers are higher levels in much lower level areas, in WoW for example, at least when I played, once you hit level 15 or so and until you got to level 50 or higher, you had to constantly watch your back so you were not swatted for a 1-hit death by a high level, once you got to a point you could actually defend against these high levels you almost never saw any. So I guess you could say designated PvP areas are barren because most people do not want fair fights, they want to laugh at the people they are 1-hit killing.

As for guards, I have never seen a game that used them efficiently, mostly because they are only in a few small areas and they still leave you open when you are actually out trying to play the game. One way they could do it, is allow guards to attack people who are flagged with killing someone without a PvP flag on. That would make it more difficult for those players to go back to towns to repair their gear or get some materials or what not. The only problem with that is it doesn't work well in games like WoW where you have 2 defined sides that are against each other.

[Minifig]

I got a reply today!

Hello:

Thank you for your interest! At this time, we do not have information on beta testing opportunities for Guild Wars 2. Please keep an eye on the official Guild Wars 2 website for all the latest news and information.

All the best,

-Signed lead dev of the Guild Wars Team-.

[Emn1ty]

As for guards, I have never seen a game that used them efficiently, mostly because they are only in a few small areas and they still leave you open when you are actually out trying to play the game. One way they could do it, is allow guards to attack people who are flagged with killing someone without a PvP flag on. That would make it more difficult for those players to go back to towns to repair their gear or get some materials or what not. The only problem with that is it doesn't work well in games like WoW where you have 2 defined sides that are against each other.

Your idea also makes sense in terms of realism. A player kills another player within viewing range of a city, the city will flag them higher and higher for each successive act. Each level adds onto the amount of time it will take to be forgotten by the city and allowed to enter safely. This would make an open PvP system that isn't a direct problem for a player until they need to equip. I like the idea of being able to kill players in a game, but also feel it should be something the community itself as well as the game dislikes. Also, central towns shouldn't allow any form of PvP.

[trag3dy]

So, after watching several gameplay videos from gamescom over at gametrailers, I have to say that I wasn't impressed.

http://www.gametrail...d-wars-2/703345

The core gameplay looks solid enough, but the writing and voice acting leaves a lot to be desired. Especially after seeing what Bioware has been doing with SWTOR.

You're assuming everything you see in those videos is final.. they haven't even started on the UI yet. They have a lot of time to improve and change things. It's way way to early to start saying I dislike this, or I dislike that when they haven't even said that the version in those videos is beta quality.

[Blackhearted]

Good, it means I won't be camped by people 3x my level.

I am all for PvP in a structured manner, but I hate games like WoW where you can just be running along questing, then suddenly get ganked by someone 20 levels higher than you with NOTHING you can do about it, and NO punishment for them doing it. Quick way to ruin a decent MMO IMO.

+1. No pvp on the main world map is a good thing. This way one can enjoy the game instead of having any enjoyment sucked out by paranoia and camping.

I got a reply today!

Generic, kinda "auto-response" sounding message ftw?

[Minifig]

Generic, kinda "auto-response" sounding message ftw?

Yeah .. I know .. but hey,.. it's a sign they got my email.