In spite of some issues that was encountered by many users, the first Guild Wars 2 beta weekend event was in no doubt a major success. Many good reviews and lots of thumbs-up from social buzzes and gaming communities were emerging in the web lately. When you first start into the world of Tyria, the feeling was quite overwhelming (from login to character creation) and the aura of the environment is very capturing. The combat system is very enthralling as well as the sounds and BG music.
Character Creation
When you first create a character, it has a 10-step procedure. Clicking each race gives you a preview of their appearance so will have a little gist of what they look alike. You can choose among five races which includes Human, Norn, Sylvari, Charr, and Asura. However, this is beta and only 3 of the race were available at the time. Professions include Guardian, Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, Thief, Elementalist, Mesmer, and Necromancer. Also, during the character creation, there will be biographical questions that will affect their personal story depending on the answers. In short, every character will have their own back story.
Like other MMO’s with different races or clans, every origin has its own place to start. When you choose to play as Human, you will begin in the town of Queensdale and the theme was like in medieval times, there were huge castles and fortresses. Same as to other race like the Norn, the concept of the setting was like of barbarians and they were literally Nordic-like warriors or barbarians perhaps. Initially when you emerge at the starting point as a Human, the town is under assault and you have to help other players to defend the place by accomplishing a number of quests. After completing the basic objectives, there will be a public event quest where you can fight a boss.
Quests
The Quest system in Guild Wars 2 differ from most of the mmorpg’s. You don’t have to search for specific NPC’s with exclamation or question markers appearing above their heads. If you are in a place where an objective is given, a guide prompt will appear on the screen with a brief summary of the objectives as well as the progress of the quest that is indicated through a filling bar. Another awesome feature is that most of the quests are given depending on the area from where you are. For example, you’re walking on foot to set an adventure to another region and do some farmer quests or water some crop/corn field but there’s this guy who’s been attacked by some hordes of bandits. You could assist him in a way but the best part there is that everyone in that area will be notified so one can gain experience and participate to this certain quest. In addition, these events are dynamically generated and varies from time to time. You don’t have to kill a specific number of mobs i.e. ‘kill x10 bandits’ and the likes, instead, there will be reasons for their invasion (stealing of supplies, raids, etc). Public event quests still do exist through approaching a particular NPC and random quests will appear depending on the users in the area and depending on other factors. NPC quests can be repeated and the difficulty rate can vary depending on the volume of the people in that specific area. The reward system is also based on your contribution to the quest.
Combat System
The combat system in GW2 is definitely one of a kind. Sure though, the default skill for every weapon is the Auto-Attack but every skill that you can acquire will vary from weapon to weapon that you are utilizing. A mace will have a different skill set from other main-hand weapons like sword or axe, same will also go for two-handed or off-hand weapons. Skills will be unlocked through a particular volume of mob kills. It’s like leveling the weapons itself. There are also unique skills for certain areas like underwater. One other awesome feature is that skills can also be combined with other. A wall of fire can be utilized to create a flaming arrow. So if a user casts a fire wall and another user shoots an arrow straight to the fire pointing to a mob, it turns into a fire arrow – giving more damage and making it more realistic. Skill challenges can be accomplished to acquire points for skills. The difficulty of this challenges varies accordingly. Another feature is the Traits, of which can be unlocked at a minimum level of 11. Trait points are as well can be obtained through accomplishing challenges. Some say that Traits are somehow related to Talents in WoW.
Endurance Meter
It is a simple function in Guild Wars 2 in which a user has its own endurance bar that can be consumed by dodging certain attacks through pressing a certain key. If the meter drops out, you can’t evade attacks temporarily until you restore your endurance meter to its minimum point. Endurance meter is different from stat points.
Player vs Player
The Player vs Player modes of this game is one of the flagship features of Guild Wars 2. Although you will find lots of content within the PvE aspect in GW2, users can hypothetically allocate almost all of their time in doing PvP stuff. The PVP is separated into two particular form, you can do the good ‘ol structured PVP in which a player will be level maxed-out and all the skills will be unlocked, giving more competitiveness and strategy against one another or fight across hundreds of players in the massive scale World vs World battles, which is also called the Eternal Battlegrounds. Participants can do 5v5 tournaments and other players can join for pick-up matches that can increase the capacity participants of up to 16 players. In WvW, group of players will compete against one another from three different servers. There will be several tasks or objectives like protecting the strongholds in order to gain award points. The process will last for 14 days and the winning server will reap benefits for the whole server such as bonus gold drops, increase in exp, etc.
