Guild Wars 2 - TheTyrianOrder

Guild Wars 2 BWE1 - Our thoughts and impressions

Neves

posted May 2, 12

The first GW2 BWE has been and gone. The vast majority of people who participated in the BWE agree, that Guild Wars 2 is truely living upto the hype and we couldn't agree more. There are far too many things to report and detail, so in this article we will go through our general feedback and impressions of the BWE experience.

Server Stability

I estimate that 250,000 people tried to log-in within the first hour that the servers went live. For any server, that load is almost unmanageable and as expected, the servers crashed several times the first night. The fact is, other than day one, there will never be that amount of people in the starting maps, ever again. Arenanet maintained good communication throughout the weekend and were able to get the servers stable fairly quickly. After the initital blip, Saturday and Sunday ran smoothly for most people. I expect the next BWE to run a lot smoother though, as Arenanet now know their servers capabilities and how to fix the problems that arise.

General game performance

My current rig:

i7-860 2.80ghz

Powercolor HD 6970 2GB

8GB Kingston Ram 1333mhz

I can run every game I have tried, on ultra settings and always maintain above 60fps with very smooth gameplay. For instance; Battlefield 3 and Total War 2: Shogun, both run fantastically.

After loading GW2 for the first time, I immediately had to turn the settings down to medium and it still only ran at around 25-30fps in the open world. In structured PVP the game ran far smoother and I didn't experience any drop in frames or choppy gameplay. For larger events, such as the Shatterer, I went down as low as 10fps. I have heard various reports that the current build was very CPU heavy. However, my CPU stayed below 40% usage the whole weekend. I truely hope Arenanet can optimize the engine to use all available CPU threads and use more of the GPU's power. Furthermore, apparently the game was set to low priority automatically and players reported that changing it to medium or high priority greatly improved performance. So next BWE, i'll give that a shot and hopefully it improves. This isn't a major concern though, as I know optimization is one of the last things developers do and I am sure it will run much smoother at launch.

Levelling and exploration

What a breath of fresh air Dynamic Events are! Whether I was defending an outpost from attacking centaurs or putting out fires with buckets of water - the game was so amazingly fun. In previous MMORPG's I have played, I would constantly be checking the EXP bar and anticipating when I would level up next. With Guild Wars 2, I remember getting a big suprise each time I levelled, as I was having so much fun I didn't notice I was about to level. The Dynamic Event system is a tribute to Arenanet, they are truely the backbone of the game. Levelling in GW2 is seamless, you don't really experience any downtime. As soon as you have finished one dynamic event, it's straight onto the next one.

The land of Tyria is truely a magnificent world, full of nooks and crannies that I cannot wait to really explore. The world is littered with little gems, tucked away - waiting to be discovered. Beautiful waterfalls, hidden caverns and sunken cities are some of the things that decorate Tyria - GW2 truely is an explorers dream.

World v World PVP

I avoided WvW PVP as I knew that once I entered into it, I would forget the rest of the game and just dedicate my whole weekend to it. What I can say is that everyone who participated in WvW PVP, on Desolation EU server, needs a pat on the back. They smashed the other two worlds throughout the whole weekend and gave us all some nice buffs as reward!

Structured PVP

After getting to level 3 on my necromancer, I decided to join 'The Mists' and get my self ready for some structured PVP. I had Axe/Warhorn and Scepter/Focus as my two weapon sets and focused my traits on being as tanky as possible, whilst grabbing any traits that improved my lifestealing capabilities. Although I found the Necromancer incredibly fun, I was pretty much button mashing for the first hour or so. I switched to a Staff and minion focused build after and I found that required a little more skill - as all of the abilities are ground targetted.

Later that evening I decided to roll a Warrior (a class I have never played in any other MMORPG) and instantly found myself at home. The Warrior in GW2, is by far the best sword and board Warrior I have ever seen or played. It had high mobility, a hamstring, a stun and even a full on block. Once I mastered exactly what each skill did and how to use it, I was truely causing havoc on the battlefield. Coupled with a 2-handed hammer, as my off set, I was a CC machine - capable of both dishing out damage and taking a huge amount. If anyone tried to kite me, I would switch to sword and board and use the jump skill to get close to them. I would hamstring straight away and hit the shield bash to stun them in place. Then the hammer would come out and the poor fellow would be stunned and knocked flying within seconds. Once you get into the swing of it (excuse the pun) and truely master your builds stengths and weaknesses, that's when the game really becomes rewarding.

My good friend played a heavily support style Guardian and together we was unmoveable objects. Once we gained control of the Clocktower, on the Battle of Khylo, we would pretty much hold it the entire game. I used 'Stomp', 'Kick' and 'Endure Pain' utility spells and Inbetween cycling them to CC the enemy, I would use my Hammer and knock people flying. As this was going on, my buddy would supply heavy support with shields and boons. If things got really messy, he would pop his Elite and be a healing machine for 15 seconds or so. At times it was almost poetic. Once we got into a flow, we would take on 4-5 people at a time and hold them off until the rest of our team came to perform clean-up duty. I truely wish I had better performance in the beta as I would of recorded everything and I could show you guys - just how amazing it was.

"I can't believe what just happened..."

"Wow...we just held off their entire team for 3-4 minutes and survived,"

were some of the things you could hear on our ventrilo. We really couldn't believe how powerful we were, when we worked together in unison. The more people play this game, the more they will realise that using skills at the right time is key to success. The skill ceiling is sky high and I can see so much potentional for Guild Wars 2 to become an e-sport. It would be amazing to spectate ten, highly skilled players, battle it out.

To wrap it up, Guild Wars 2 is definitely living upto its hype. This is the game I have been waiting for...this is the game the MMORPG genre has been waiting for.

This article is just a brief overview of my BWE. I have so much more to go through, so expect some really detailed articles within the next few weeks.

Until next time,

adios amigos!

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Shandaila Since Neves has discussed the overall game and touched more on the PvP side of things, I will talk a little about my per ...

Pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 10/04/12

Neves

posted Apr 9, 12

Remember, you can pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 tommorow! This is just a reminder that you can finally pre-purchase the game of the century, within the next 24 hours!

Here is a direct link to the pre-purchase website:

https://buy.guildwars2.com/

Pre-purchasing will give you the following bonuses:

Digital Edition

Guild Wars 2 game

Digital Deluxe Edition

Guild Wars 2 game

Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill

Rytlock Miniature

Golem Banker

Chalice of Glory

Tome of Influence

Guild Wars 2 game

Summon Mistfire Wolf Elite Skill

Rytlock Miniature

Golem Banker

Chalice of Glory

Tome of Influence

10-inch figurine of Rytlock

112 page Making of Guild Wars 2 book

Custom Art Frame

Art Portfolio and Five Art Prints

Best of Guild Wars 2 Soundtrack CD

Guides and Builds Forum

Guild Wars 2 BWE1 - Our thoughts and impressions

Guild Wars 2 BWE: 27/04/12

Pre-purchase Guild Wars 2 10/04/12

TTO - Guild Wars 2 Quiz