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[Kohiko Sun]

Guild Wars 2 Launch Date Announcement

I might be a little distracted at the end of August.

[Ulphus]

GW2 is something I've been tempted by (as a concept) but I don't know very much about it.

Can you give me a sales pitch?

[Kohiko Sun]

Short version: Beta testing has been a ball. You actually do feel like you're affecting the world for everybody by what you choose to do or not do, especially at higher levels as dynamic events become long series with branching choices. It's gorgeous and very immersive, and even though it's a themepark game, it blurs towards the sandboxy end of the spectrum.


A copy-pasta version:

• Dynamic Content – Gone are the days of looking for a symbol above an NPCs head to tell you exactly where to go just as everyone else has before you. Content in GW2 is generated by the Dynamic Event system that is completely persistent and changes how everyone in the world sees content based on your action or in-action.

• Active Combat – No playing whack-a-mole. Damage in the game is avoidable. If an enemy is lining up a big spell, you can dodge it and keep on fighting. Positioning relative to your enemy and your allies will be a key factor during combat, among other things.

• The Holy Trinity – Dead. Gone. And good riddance. There are no defined class roles in GW2. It’s not fun to hope that one person logs in so that you can actually play a game. You can generally take any combination of professions that you wish into content and succeed in the same time-frame as any other as long as you communicate.

• Personal Story – At character creation you get to choose from a wide variety of biographical entries based on your race that will affect your personal story. There are over 7,000 different starting possibilities for your story before you start making in-game decisions that affect what happens next.

• WvWvW PvP – There’s 2 flavors of PvP, one is the Arena style combat that GW1 is currently known for, the competitive style. The second kind is World vs World vs World where 3 servers are pit against each other every 2 weeks to battle it out across 4 persistent maps filled with 2,000 people that involve capture points, resource gathering, castle sieging, etc. Your server gains and loses PvE benefits depending on its War Score.

• Level Scaling – You never have to worry about your friend being too high of a level for you to play together. The game will adjust your level down to the cap for an area if you are above it.

• No Monthly Fee

[Ulphus]

Short version: Beta testing has been a ball. You actually do feel like you're affecting the world for everybody by what you choose to do or not do, especially at higher levels as dynamic events become long series with branching choices. It's gorgeous and very immersive, and even though it's a themepark game, it blurs towards the sandboxy end of the spectrum.

I did some youtube searching and found some video of the beta. I was a bit put off by the mini-skirt costume on the chosen character, and the tendency of the camera-drones to go for up-skirt photography, but wasn't entirely clear whether that was a player choice or a default look for the character type. (I do approve of the quick look I got of the armour.)

The "Personal story" started with protecting a village, along with dozens of other players, and seemed to involve killing the EoLN while dozens of other people tried to as well. Following the successful defeat of the EoLN, there was a pause loading the next phase because there were too many people waiting to move on to the next bit at the same time...

I guess I'd need to poke around a bit more before throwing money at it. Do you know if there's a demo?

[Kybernetes Moros]

A couple of friends have been trying to pull me towards this one for a while. My hazy, hazy memory of the original years ago has me finding some of the gender armour differences (male is a regular jacket type thing; female is poledancer fare) pretty jarring; is that the same as before, or is it shifted more to player choice there?

As little as I remember of the first, though, I do seem to recall it being relatively entertaining, and this stuff I'm reading about the dynamic events is kinda appealing. Might be something for me to look into at some point.

[Ulphus]

Did the previous version have RP in it?

Do you lose your stuff when you die?

Can you steal other people's stuff?

Does it have bind on pickup?

[Rin Kaelestria]

First off, I'd like to link this: http://imgur.com/a/FqE27#0
That leads to all the screen shots I took during the last beta. Now I had to turn down the graphics just a little as I have crap computers, so good chance that things will look better in the game if you can crank up the graphics all the way.

Did the previous version have RP in it?

Do you lose your stuff when you die?

Can you steal other people's stuff?

Does it have bind on pickup?

First off, I did know of an RP guild back in the original Guild Wars. They didn't RP as much, but they were there. The first Guild Wars had enough lore and flavor to the game to support an RP community. The second one doesn't skip on either of that, if anything there's MORE to it. So there is a potential for an RP community to start up

Second, stuff is not lost when you "die" (die is quoted because it's called 'defeated' in the game). What does happen is 1) some of your armor is damaged, and that does money to repair. 2) If no one wanders by to "rally" you (rez), you do have to spend some money to port your dead self back to a way point. 3) I think you do suffer a small penalty to health, maybe stats, when you do die, but it's not permanent.

Third, as far as I know, you can't steal other player's stuff (even if you are thief profession). I think I did hear about maybe getting stuff off of a defeated player in the WvW pvp events, but I don't think they loose it. I'll have to double check on that.

Fouth .... bind? As in keyed macros? I dunno, tbh. I didn't look into that at all. 

Anyhow, in regards to the female armor, I think depending on the race you play and what profession, you may have some skimpy armor. The more human looking races might be, but you might not see that happening as much with the more inhuman races, like the Asura and Charr. I was playing a charr female thief during the beta, and obviously she's not in anything skimpy. Be weird if there was something for the charr, though. 

[Mizhara]

He means whether or not gear will be bound to a player/character/account when used. And yes, it does. I've been keeping an eye over the shoulder of a friend when he plays the beta weekend events. There's no world PvP, there's almost no personal consequence for fucking up and it's pretty much the exact opposite of Eve. Diametrically opposed even.

... and yet I don't seem to mind. From everything I can tell it'll be an amusing and fun game to play. The sense of scale is great and the cities are actual freakin' cities. Haven't really sat down with it myself but since I'm hoping I'll be past the insane workload by the time it's released, I've bought it and stand ready for release. The WvWvW stuff alone looks absolutely mindboggling.

As for RP... I don't know. We'll see, I guess.

[Rin Kaelestria]

Ah yes, that, and that I have noticed. However, when I played, not every item piece you wore was bounded to you. I do recall a few pieces of armor (or was it weapons) which I had used previously and resold them at a Trading Post. It wasn't often, I'll admit.

[Kohiko Sun]

When your health runs out, you're Downed:


If you can't get back to your feet before your Downed health runs out, you're Defeated:


Like it was mentioned, I could be bandaged and CPRed back to life by other players in either of those cases, or teleport back to any waypoint I want after Defeated. I lose nothing by dying except some damage to my armor I need to get repaired, the (minor) cost of teleporting to a waypoint based on distance, and a short-length decrease to the amount of health I have in the Downed state - 25% less health each time; after four, you are instantly Defeated until you stop getting yourself killed.

In World vs World pvp, it's the same, but the killer(s) get XP and loot for killing the other player. The loser only has the same penalties as in pve death; the loot doesn't come from their inventory.

Clothes: Yes, the starter armor for magical types is how you described it. And, it's so begging for Sailor Moon jokes. (In fact, my family and friends are already planning on all of us making the Sailor Scouts with alts as a joke, but I'll save my mix of lol and hate for the ridiculousness of Tera.) But, there are so many options for looks, including over 400 dyes and up to four dye locations on each item, that you can mix and match quickly to get your own preferred look. And, actually, the showing of skin is fairly gender-equal, and mostly not a big deal like the internets want you to think; I'd love to try some of the women's outfits IRL. An example is the gladiator-looking armor:
[spoiler]Men:

Women:
[/spoiler]A big focus is on personal styles, so the poofy micro skirt a caster gets at level one is just one of a wide spectrum of appearance choices you can have in the game. And, the gladiator-y armor could just as easily be realistic steel from head to toe. My elementalist was looking like this not long after the tutorial:


For RP, Arenanet won't be labeling any servers as anything. But, there is a huge RP community already among the beta testers, and unofficial RP servers are already being picked by the community (Tarnished Coast for NA/Oceania and Petrified Forest for EU) just like Star Was Galaxies and Lord of the Rings players did. You can guest on other servers for free if you have friends there, so you aren't tied down. You can only join in WvW pvp from your home server, though.

There are BoP items, but they're mostly just cosmetically-different armors with identical stats as non-BoP. Most bound items are Bind-on-Equip, so you can sell and trade them; which by the by, the Trading Post works exactly like EVE's market, not an auction house.

[kalaratiri]

This is actually looking rather interesting. I guess I'll have to save some money >.>

[Ulphus]

Thank you Kohiko, very helpful (although I couldn't see the male gladiator... (The female gladiator made me go "Protect your soft bits, any sort of hit to the abdomen and you'll be tripping on intestines! Also, knees! you'll miss them when they're gone.")

[Casiella]

Thank you Kohiko, very helpful (although I couldn't see the male gladiator... (The female gladiator made me go "Protect your soft bits, any sort of hit to the abdomen and you'll be tripping on intestines! Also, knees! you'll miss them when they're gone.")

Interestingly, the exact same comments apply to the male gladiator outfit.

[Ulphus]

Interestingly, the exact same comments apply to the male gladiator outfit.

Then I'll say them again

I bet the amount of exposed skin has little to do with the protection levels of the armour.

[Ulphus]

Also, as I understand it, the reactions of the player can ameliorate or avoid damage in game. How big a deal is latency (ping-time) likely to be?

Am I going to be able to usefully play with people outside Australia/NZ?