Guild Wars 2 : Second Beta Weekend

I have the unfortunate situation of needing to be at work during the second Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event. Granted, the first event didn't quite get me anxious to play again, I did want to try as hard as I can to really like the game. I wanted to see what all those who are hyping up the game are seeing.

But for the hour or so I was playing, only one thing came to mind: I wanted to go back and do something else. Specifically, I wanted to play more Diablo 3.

Guild Wars 2 has yet to show itself as THE game to play. While I do not have any buyers remorse for pre-purchasing the game, I do want to try to find out why I am not raving about the game. ArenaNet seems to just have everything done right. Graphics and visuals are just amazing. The cities feel alive and vibrant and are large enough to actually be cities. Motion and combat is fluid and the ability system is pretty interesting.

But something just feels....generic....about the whole thing. Not a whole lot of the game feels new and refreshing. Certainly not how RIFT was at launch. SWTOR's game universe also had a freshness to it despite relatively archaic game design. The world of Guild Wars 2 feels like the run of the mill medieval fantasy world that I've seen many times over.

I guess a huge part of the letdown is the story. Particularly the dialogue cutscenes. If they just removed those and replaced it all with quest text, it may actually feel more immersive than it is now. The awkward animations really, really detract from any attempt to lose myself in the story. There is also something creepy about how characters barely move and stare in just that one way in all those cutscenes. It has been rather painful to watch.

There are also some disconnects with the story. In the human lands, there does not seem to be much connection between the prologue and the story after it. An invasion of centaurs leads to some huge bone hands....and they are never mentioned again. At least the centaurs re-appear, but the bone hands and elementals; their involvement is not touched upon. Perhaps it will later in the game, but by then, the event would probably have been forgotten. You would think that something able to summon such a montrosity would be looked into by authorities and would require a hero to help figure deal with a larger, overarching threat.

Dynamic events have been a huge part of driving the hype of the game, but it too is not quite as good as I was led to believe. The problem is that the dynamic event feels less dynamic if you can wait for it to happen. Granted, there does not appear to be set times for events to happen, but they do happen fairly often. Unlike RIFT's titular rifts, GW2's events are strictly local to just a small area and so they are far more predictable. Some of the events are also very boring.

As alive and as dynamic as ArenaNet wants the world to feel, ironically there isn't really all that much to do. Yes, exploration is supposed to be a major activity, but exploration can only go so far. I go into a new area and see wheat fields. Yay. But also nothing happening at the time so it's several minutes of nothing really happening except for me walking across large farmland. After dealing with an area's quest, you don't really get an option to do it again.

All this said, everything is in beta. Even if some complaints are about things that will likely not change, there's still time for ArenaNet to put some more meat into the game. As it is, I don't look forward to the game as I normally do for big releases. Its come to the point where I won't mind only being able to play a week after release if timing does not line up right with my schedule.

Highlights:

• Yes, even after an entire article saying how I dislike the game, there are still highlights. Lets not say I'm not an impartial reviewer
• They have Asura models in the world now and one gives an activated event. I haven't tried repeating it though. The novelty of herding little Moas into a pen really wears out quickly.
• Yes, the Asura are really cute. I am now 100% sure I won't be playing one.
• Abilities seem to have been buffed. I don't remember dealing quite as much damage as I do now with some guardian abilities.
• Speaking of which, purchasable abilities have been streamlined to weed out the weird or weak ones. Skill point costs are also lower.
• Skills are now tiered. No more getting some more advanced skills until you get enough of the lower tier skills.
• Some UI enhancements. Mostly minor, but definitely makes sense.