Next week pre-purchase for Guild Wars 2 is available, including perks like guaranteed Beta weekend events. I’ve never played Guild Wars, but have had my eye on GW2, since I’ve seen GW praised by Dopers over the years.
Is anyone getting excited about this game?
I am so looking forward to this game, but I won’t be doing the prepurchase deal since I have already blown my spring gaming budget on Diablo 3. GW2 was a blast even for a single-player gamer like me.
I’m looking forward to it, and will most likely get the pre-purchase. Hey, it’s tax-deductible for me, so why not?
I’m torn on it. I spent lots of time playing GW and will be in pretty good shape for whatever carryover there is between games. On the other hand, There doesn’t seem to be anything to replace HA (a PvP arena). I imagine that there will still be GvG (Guild vs. Guild) but I hated GvG and loved HA. Not to mention the complete lack of help I got from Anet when my account got hacked.
There will be no subscription fees. That makes me wonder if they’ll have an “item mall” to sustain income. I hate games with those.
An item mall? I’m not sure what you mean. I can’t recall exactly how they handled it in the first game; they did have some content players could buy (extra storage space, “minis,” costume items) but it was all very inobtrusive. I seem to recall you just purchased these items through your account page, not anywhere within the game world itself. If you’re referring to players trading items, that was done either through a message board or by advertising items within the game itself, and players could choose whether or not to “see” the trade channel while they were in shared areas.
The “no subscription” model seems to work very well for them. I don’t have the technical expertise to understand the differences between their required server capacity and that of WOW, for example, but I would imagine the GW requirements are much lower because of the unusual structure of the game environment itself.
I’m a sucker for that kind of extra content. I guess I’ll have to use my willpower. 
So then, the upfront cost of the game keeps out the riff-raff that ruins free-to-play games?
Just wondering, what makes the game environment unusual?
I’m not sure I can adequately explain it, but this is an interesting blog post from one of the members of the design team. They’ve really aimed to make an MMORPG that’s not a PITA.
Apparently GW2 is not going to be as unusual as the first game, where there were towns and outposts where you mingled with other player characters, but once you left those areas you (or your group) were in your own “instance” of the game world. PvP was an optional aspect of the game fought in an arena by players who chose to participate. They’ve changed this for GW2 but still made PvP something you have to opt in to.
There will always be jerks in MMOs, but ArenaNet employs interesting ways to deal with them, like the time they sent one of the bosses into the common areas to multiban a crapload of gold sellers with one sweep of his scythe.
Here is a cheater getting banned in GW. It was pretty cool to see Dhumm breaking out the ban scythe in game. There is even footage of that happening to someone in the middle of a GvG match.
Hey wonderlust, did you usually play a Rit in GW? Wanderlust works well with earthbind, brambles, toxicity and signet of infection.
Love the links, Sudden Kestral and Ike Witt! I’ve never played GW but am definitely intrigued. I’ve watched some of the recent Yogscast GW2 beta videos.
Well, I went ahead and bought the deluxe digital edition. I hope I get as much out of GW2 as I did from GW.
I like that you can make a max level geared character right of the bat if you just want to pvp like in GW 1.
Birthday present to myself! Deluxe for sure. I want that wolf skill!
We never played GW, but will pre-purchase Guild Wars 2.
For anyone on the fence, the first public beta event is this weekend. How will I choose between my current mmo, Rift, and this one?
Next weekend. April 27-29. Looking forward to taking the game for a test drive.
Thanks, I meant next weekend. Have you decided what race or class you want to play?
I’ll probably play them all before too long. I’ll start with a ranger, my main character from GW is a ranger. I’ll probably also do a necro and an ele right at the start as well.