Last BWE is July 20.
Release is August 28!
Man, I am SO ready for this game to be out and available to play when I want, instead of having to drool between BWEs!
Well it’s about time! I couldn’t get into the pre-release, so I’ve been sitting here with nothing to do except play Diablo 3 and Skyrim 
while awaiting the release date. This will be my last full game purchase ever (leaving expansion/DLC options open), so I hope it’s as good as I expect it to be.
I think I’d better order an espresso maker, too. I foresee a lot of long gaming nights.
Yeah, definitely better get an espresso machine because Skyrim’s first expansion, Dawnguard, should be coming out pretty soon too.
Yay, glad it’s AFTER MrTao and I move across town and get a puppy. I mean, the cats are used to my being on the computer, and think the keyboard is the place to sit when you want to camp mom for snacks <they’re right…> but the puppy’s gonna need some time to adjust. 
I’ve been kind of curious about this… I never played Guild Wars, but I have played WoW, Rifts and Star Wars Online. Given what people have seen so far, how is GW2 going to compare to those? Probably a hopelessly vague comparison, but I have my occasional flights of optimism.
Having played all of those, I will say, in my opinion, MUCH better. It’s a fantastic game. All of those are the same kind of game - in fact, Rift and especially SWTOR are basically just WoW-clones dressed up in fancy outfits, Rift with Warhammer Online’s public events thrown in and expanded on. GW2 is much, much, more.
I think GW2 and TSW represent that third generation of MMOs we’ve been waiting for ever since WoW got a chokehold on the MMO design and no one did anything but copy it.
I think SWTOR is more interesting than WoW, but even with that personal opinion, I liked the GW2 Beta more than I thought I would. I actually pre-ordered it for my sweetie, but since I was the one with the time to play, I did. Hated the graphics at first, the movement, having to learn new crap always annoys me.
But by the end of the second day I was enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, I’ll say that. And now, of course, I’ll have to get MrTao his own account.
And everyone always says the newest game is the best one, yadda yadda. It’s not even out yet, or even finished. I don’t see how anyone can make that comparison yet.
I’d wait until it comes out and review what real players think before deciding to jump head-in. I mean, I’m a dork and ENJOY the first week or so of a release, but that’s just me, and I’ve been disappointed far more often than not. DAoC , SWG and SWTOR are the only ones that had me really interested, and I did play WoW on and off also. I enjoyed all of them, but the rest were boring, to me, within a short time. Everyone’s mileage is going to vary, of course.
Hell, I might be bored with GW2 after a while, also. But without a subscription fee, it’s no big thing to just let it lie in case it changes in ways that I will enjoy more.
The biggest potential draw for me is going to be the world PvP, but that can go any number of wonderful OR absolutely terrible ways, so it’s still a wait and see game on that.
GW1 weapon and minipet rewards grinded and ready! 
I just have to figure out how to convince Mrs G that we need a new laptop…
Guild Wars 2 is the first game since WoW was released to just sit down and ask not what WoW was getting right (and then just copy it), they sat down at the beginning and asked what everyone (including WoW) was doing wrong. They set out to innovate and take risks. I could sit here and list all the things I absolutely love about GW2, but that would take way too long and be full of squee and bubblies, and it would just plain be embarrassing all around (to be fair, there are a few things I’m not too fond of – but only a small few, and I can deal).
Instead, I’ll just say this: GW2 was the first game in many years where I sat down to play and forgot about important things like eating and sleeping. (“No way I’ve been playing that long! Seriously? OK, I’ll grab some food after I finish this next event…”) That hasn’t happened to me since back when Everquest was brand new.
Well, it is a learning curve even for those of us who played a lot of GW. The graphic are bound to be better in the release. The beta has been only using DX9, but I can’t imagine that the full release won’t be DX11.
Well shit, I haven’t worn out the first part yet. I’ll obviously need a donut machine, too.
I’ve never played WoW or similar games, so my knowledge of them is limited to videos I’ve seen and online descriptions, but I’ve always thought of the GW franchise as being sort of a thinking gamer’s MMO. It’s like the game was developed with features that made it more attractive to thoughtful players and people who wanted to adopt a specific, well-defined play style and carry that throughout the game. You wanna be a collector? They included and refined features that allowed you to collect, hoard, buy and sell. If you wanted to just slam through enemies, pick up loot and sell it all right away, and look for or craft uber weapons, there were game elements to support that kind of player, too. If all you wanted to do was stand around in town in your fancy party duds and flirt with that cute “girl,” you could do that, too.
AFAIAC, the Guild Wars development team is one of the most responsive in the industry, too, and they are very involved with their player base even long after the first flush of game popularity fades away. They were still holding festivals and special events, even annual “holidays,” in the various game worlds years after most people had stopped playing GW. They were quick to jump on problems like gold sellers and cheats, and I can’t think of a single time I had difficulty with a download or accessing the game when I wanted to play. It was easy to form guilds of friends and to find each other online.
You might want to look at some of the Guild Wars gameplay videos on Youtube. That’d probably give you a good idea what the original game was like. I can’t say how GW2 will differ, but I’m optimistic that it will be fundamentally as well designed as the first game was.
I’m looking forward to it, too.
I hear there will be another beta event weekend, July 20.
I’ve played on both beta weekends so far, and I’m hugely excited about this game. I’ve played WoW, Rift, and SWTOR, and I agree with everyone who says this is better. Of course, the proof is how the gameplay works out long-term, but I had the same experience Headrush042 - it’s the first game in FOREVER that I got lost in.
SWTOR did nothing for me. I played to level 20 or so, and it always felt like work. “OK, I gotta go get xxx. Hmm now I have a ship, oh look there’s mini-ship game. I just went up a level, now I gotta go do yyy. Is it time to stop and make dinner now? Oh good, let’s turn this stupid thing off.”
I like Rift a bit more, but once I hit max level, I couldn’t figure out anything fun to do.
Off the top of my head, here’s what’s different about GW2:
Combat: You have different skills depending on what weapon(s) you have equipped. This makes sense to me - in real life, a warrior carrying a shield and a one-handed sword fights considerably different than if he/she were carrying a 2-handed axe.
You have two sets of weapons, and can quickly switch between them. You can be very awesome if you figure out the timing well.
You also have to pay attention during combat. You need to dodge, you need to direct your attacks. One thing both Rift and SWTOR suffered from IMO was incredibly dull combat. Lead by pressing 2. Press 4 when you have enough mana/attack points/whatever. Press 3 whenever it’s available. Rinse and repeat. Not so in GW2.
I haven’t seem this so much myself, but rumor has it that there are tons of ways to combine attacks between 2 or more characters. Like a wizard might cast a “wall of fire” spell and if an archer shoots through that wall, his arrows become fire arrows. That type of thing. That sounds super cool to me, and I look forward to figuring out neato things to do while duoing.
Quests: No standard quest log like every other game out there. You have a “personal quest” that maxes out around level 20 iirc, and that’s the only “quest list” I’ve seen so far in the beta. Other than that, if you wander into an area where a quest is active, you automatically get that quest. You can ignore it if you want and keep going, or participate. All quests except the personal quest are group quests - giant snakes might be attacking a village, and everyone around is tasked to fight them off. Or an NPC cook might be gathering eggs, and everyone around has to help her find enough. I didn’t see one “go kill 10 rats” type of quest.
General: All areas normalize your level downwards. For example, a level 15 character traveling through a level 5-7 area will find him/herself at the appropriate level. I figured this out the hard way when I went back to a newbie area to explore an area I had missed. I assumed it’d be easy, until I realized my “effective level” was 4, and those level 5 bears were kicking my ass.
There’s a customizable skill tree that you use by getting skill points. Each area has multiple skill-point quests where you need to do a quest of some sort to gain the skill point. They are marked on your map and fun to go gather.
Cities: hoo-man, the cities are huge. And beautiful. They manage to get a level of scale that no other game that I’ve seen has done, without it becoming tedious to travel through the city. The cities just seem BIG.
What else? I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot. But those are the standouts in my mind.
The next beta event has been announced for July 20-22. Asura and Sylvari will be playable this time.
Now I can finally make an Asura named Jar Jar Binkes, either as mes or a thief.
Reminder: Last beta event weekend before release.
Yet another FYI, the event hasn’t started yet but I am now downloading quite a bit of data, I assume it is a more ‘final’ version of the game.
Yeah, I let it download for several hours last night and made it to 1% (:mad: rassin’ frassin’ country DSL), so I’ve given up on the beta event and will just wait for the game release.
I’m in there at the moment - man, the Asura are going to be fun to play. I’m less certain about the Sylvari, though: they seem a bit more stock-standard “noble hero nobly going forth” etc, whereas the Asura have a more smart-ass approach to things
There is a NPC, an Asuran merchant, named Squik.
Only 27 days until Early Release!!! I’ve become so conditioned to isolated beta events, I can’t even imagine what it will feel like to have constant access and at long last establish my characters in a persistent world. I cannot wait to try cube-surfing in the Asura capitol!