Guild Wars 2
So, Guild Wars 2 is out, and has been out for about a week since Pre-Release started, and about 4 days since Official Release. At least Kevin has asked me some questions about it, so I thought I'd share some information on the game for those who are interested, and trying to decide. So, here goes nothing.
Guild Wars 2 is another game in the genre of MMORPGs that inevitably competes with WoW because let's face it, WoW is the big walrus on the beach and you got to overtake that walrus if you want any walrus ladies. So far I think GW2 does a very good job of setting itself as relatively different from WoW, in the ways that a MMORPG can. Of course there's leveling, and 'talents', and abilities, but how they interact with you as a player are fairly different. Here's a picture of the basic user abilities, to help explain:
Guild Wars 2
These are your weapon skills. Buttons 1 and 2 are determined by your Main Hand weapon, button 3 is determined by your Main Hand/Off Hand combo, and buttons 4 and 5 are determined by your Off Hand. Two Handed weapons have their own 5 skills. After you unlock (via use of the weapons) those 5 skills, they will never change unless you change what weapons you're using. You still find weapon upgrades like a normal MMO, but you don't gain new weapon skills as you level, unless of course you find a different weapon type you can use but haven't before. Underneath the skills you'll notice two do not have a red bar under them, three do. The red bar indicates the selected target is not in range to be hit. However, melee abilities do not require a target, and simply swinging your weapon will hit any target in range.
Green: Related to weapon skills, this button will swap between your primary and seconary weapon sets. As a thief I have a sword/dagger combo as well as a short bow to use. Once you're in combat, you cannot change any gear or skills (will get to the skills portion), but you can swap between your weapon sets. Outside of combat, there is no cooldown on weapon swapping. Inside, it's only 10 seconds.
Blue: This is my class skill and resources. Some classes have more skills, but it varies between classes. This skill will never change, but is a pretty variable skill. For a thief it is called Steal. Steal shadowsteps me to the target and steals one of their abilities, depending on class in PvP, or monster type in PvE. The diamonds are basically Rogue energy. All of my 2-5 skills have no cooldown, but cost a number of points to use. Points regen over time, and some abilities and traits make them regen faster.
Pink: Healing skill. Every class has a few to choose from, but only start with one available.
Guild Wars 2
My skills. These are what let people have large variety. These skills are bought with skill points. You obtain one every level starting at 5, as well as every time you complete a skill challenge. Bought in tiers, higher tier skills are generally stronger, but cost more skill points to gain access to. Skill points can be changed any time you're out of combat, as long as the skill isn't on cooldown. While the majority of skill points are determined by your class, the two at the top with orange backgrounds are determined by my race. Effects range from shadowstep to a target, shadowstep to an area, aoe stealthing heal bubble, various traps that you can lay, poisons with varying effects that last for X hits, a grenade that slows targets, group buffs, and just plain passive stat buffs. The variety is huge, and I change mine out all the time when I'm doing different things.
Purple: This is your elite skill. Similar to your slot skills, you can only have one elite skill. They unlock for purchase starting at level 30, and cost 10 or 30 skill points, depending on which of the two tiers of elite skills you get. As a note, you also gain a skill point for every full level of experience you get after level 80. I've currently bought all of my available skills.
Traits: Not pictured, but another big part of character customization is trait selection. Traits are earned at level 11 and every level thereafter, giving you 70 total by the time you finish leveling. Traits function much like talent points, but you have five 'trees' to select from. Each tree correlates to a specific stats, Power/Precision/Toughness/Vitality, or a class specific stat for the fifth tree. These equate to Damage/Crit/Damage Reduction/Health. Stats are universal, so Power will increase damage for every class, but only three classes can use light armor, three medium armor, and two heavy armor. Putting 5 points into any tree will gain you a specific passive ability, usually related to the tree. For example, in my crit tree, my 5 point passive is that I gain 5% crit if my health is over 90%. You get another passive at 15 and 25 points. At 10, 20, and 30 points you get to choose a passive from a list, based on that tree. The list is cumulative within the tree. At 20 you can choose any of the 20 passives, or the 10 passive, and at 30 you can choose one of any passive in that tree. Looking at builders on
www.guildhead.com will give an idea of what you can get.
Leveling
Leveling is very simple in this game. I won't pretend there isn't any grind aspect to it, because regardless what Oograx says, all MMOs have a grind aspect. The different with Guild Wars is the variety of things to grind. Crafting in professions gives you experience, res'ing fellow players gets you experience, harvesting resources gets you experience, and exploring the map gets you experience. This is in addition to the normal things. The primary way to 'progress' through areas is via 'heart quests'.
Guild Wars 2
The heart is normally empty, but is filled when you complete whatever the task that person wants you to do. In this picture it's help the town deal with undead attacking. Others range from feedings cows, stomping out wasp nests, clearing graffiti, or one where I was given a stealth field and told to sneak around a military camp to train the troops to spot intruders. Generally there are multiple things to do to earn completion towards each heart, so you can be killing things while you're breaking stuff to complete them faster. Once completed, you get some nice bonus experience and access to the karma items that vendor is selling.
Karma is a sort of event currency. Periodically throughout the world, an event will start, and usually more than one event at a time is going on in any given zone. Simply show up and help out, and you'll get experience, karma, and money. Most events are single event and done, but there are some more in-depth ones. In the final zone you have to take bases across the map, raise troop moral to assault an enemy temple, take staging areas towards the temple, and eventually take the temple itself from its guardian. This is a 30+ person required event, and unlocks access to the level 80 dungeon. If the world can't complete the event, nobody can do that dungeon.
Another thing this brings up is the community, and what is in place to almost force it to be more enjoyable. Gathering nodes are player-specific. If you see a node, another player will also see a node there, but if you gather that node, they will still be able to gather that same node. You only mine or harvest your own nodes, and cannot affect the resources of other players. Similarly, mob kill experience doesn't degrade if multiple people attack it, but instead gives full experience to anyone that hit the mob before it died. It also gives full loot chances to those people. This means that if you're farming a reagent for some recipe, and you see someone else farming it too, it's actually faster to team up and kill stuff because you'll both get more loot since neither person wants to miss out on the kills of the other.
PvP
First things first. There is no world PvP. It just doesn't exist unless you want to go PvP. When you do want to go PvP however, there are two options to you.
First, WvWvW. Staged on the apex of your three worlds, eternal battlegrounds have been setup between three servers that rotate on a bi-weekly basis. Capturing fortresses results in increased resource gain over time, which in turn 'buys' your server permanent upgrades to loot drop chances, maximum health, crafting speeds, kill experience, and other things. Combat is mostly siege based, but roaming with friends can result in some fun battles away from guards and siege weapons. Everyone is buffed to level 80 on entrance, but obviously higher levels enjoy bonuses to gear and stats.
Second, is the battleground and arena PvP. You still get buffed to 80, but you're only allowed to use PvP gear in these areas. You're given a set the first time you enter the area, and you can upgrade it as you increase your PvP rank. Weapon choices/rune choices (set bonuses, basically) are completely free to change. Your PvP rank for this is kept completely separate from your level, but higher level players still have access to traits and slot skills that lower level players do not.
Guild Wars 2
Overall, I think Guild Wars 2 is a very good game. There are certainly some areas that need polish, a small number of bugs in the very end-game areas that are being fixed relatively quickly, but on a large scale it was done right. Forcing the playerbase to cooperate helps reduce the feeling that a single bad seed can ruin your play experience by having timers on ore nodes or something similar.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, I'd be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.
