Guild Wars 2 (PC) review

[PeteJ]

The MMO template written by World of Warcraft many years ago finally gets re-written with Guild Wars2. Hurrah.

I loved the original, which looking back was probably the best MMO in the past ten years. It was unique (and remains unique even after the sequel) and it was great fun. Unfortunately I never stuck with it as shiney new titles like Lord of Rings Online came along which pulled me away, which as it turned out, were exactly like WoW which I had already become bored of.

Guild Wars 2, then. I've only put a couple of hours in but already it's obvious ArenaNet have done something different. Three reasons really stick out:
Reason 1: There are no quests*
There are no 'hub' quest givers like in....every RPG ever. 'Quests' appear as you walk around the world, not as a quest to you, but as an Event for everybody in the area. I was running through a forest earlier, when suddenly I stumbled across an Event to take down a big beastie, and with ten or so people we brought it down. Everyone who contributed to the event gets a reward. No more 'queueing' for key monsters (or getting them stolen from under you). Also, no more loot being stolen, no more resources being stolen, since it is all shared.
*There are 'Personal Quests' as part of your characters story, which you setup in a Mass Effect stylee by answering a few questions.

Reason 2: There are no healers
The so-called Holy Trinity of MMO classes is no more. No healers...or rather, everyone is a healer. Everybody gets to have fun. Hurrah!

Reason 3: Combat
I absolutely hate that in other MMOs if you physically move your character out of the way of an attack you still get hit. Not in GW2, if it doesn't hit you, then it doesn't hit you. It's also skill based - like in the original you have quite a few skills to pick from, but only a few can be selected at once.

It's fun. You basically get to explore a massive, really loveingly created world and occasonally come across massive battles which you can contribute as much as you like to if you want to complete it. Pretty much everything you do gets you experience so there isn't much of a grind like in other RPGs. Just being near an event can get you XP, or walking to a new area gets you XP.
All this, plus there is a fully implemented under-water combat system (go underwater and you get a whole new weapon set, the ability to play on other servers if your friends are there, no subscription cost and the massive (yet untested by me) World Vs World Vs World PVP where three servers get to battle each other.

I'm on Desolation, Fuser The Bold, Elementalist.

[rmoxon]

Played quite a bit of this over the last few days and I really like it.

The most impressive thing about it is probably the combat, it takes the standard MMO trappings and blends them with more action based gameplay, making somthing that feels very much part of the genre but also much more skill based.

One negative about the game is that it seems to require a really powerful rig to run smoothly with decent graphical settings and all I have is a two year old laptop which doesn't seem to be up the job. So overall it's a very fun but incredibly jerky experience.

[Adrock]

Was tempted by this earlier in the day but the prices are crazy. I'm certainly not gonna be paying £40 for a digital copy.

[SuperBeatBoy]

My char name is Eren Vandercloak, I'm also on Desolation. Already added you Pete.

[PeteJ]

Just did my first big group event, probably around 30 players all taking down the boss which I just stumbled upon. That kind of thing you don't normally see in an MMO until hundreds of hours in, pretty cool.

Think I actually went into seconds per frame though. Pretty much dropped down to minimum settings now which is frustrating as a lot of the time I can run it in near full detail at 30fps, then suddenly it drops to sub-ten and never really recovers.

[Adam]

Nvidia have released beta drivers which improve performance a little on GW2, if you have an Nvidia card.

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/art...vers-released/

[MisterBubbles]

Guild Wars is one of my favourite games ever, and have put about near 2000 hours into it with all the expansions, im still away for a while but when I return I'll pick it up asap, will probably pick up limited edition too.

[Silvergun X]

I keep seeing comments popping up everywhere about poor performance on high performance rigs and it's confusing me.

For reference, I'm running a Phenom II X4 850, with a GTX 460 card. I'm maxing everything out and getting 20-30 fps with no real huge drops unless I'm participating in WvW, by which point it goes to around 10-15.

I'm guessing it's general optimisation issues regardless of the rig you're running on.

[Adam]

i7 2700, 8gb DDR3 1600Mhz, GTX 570. Game runes great with everything maxed out, almost. Turned shadows down a little as there's not much difference in their appearance. 50-60 fps.

Keep turning the game on and off, it's still not fully operational. Guilds are broken, the black lion trading post is broken. The gem store is up and down. The game is currently lagging severely for everyone on my server (Seafarer's Rest) had to turn it off last night during an instanced personal story quest as it was just ruining the experience for me. Hopefully this all gets fixed asap 'cause when it works it's a really good game.

[Adrock]

Definitely gonna be getting this soon enough. Sounds like a nice take on the fighting side and maybe a bit more context to than just standing and mashing keyboard buttons not worried about much else.