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[Column] Guild Wars 2: Review in Progress Part 1
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Now that Guild Wars 2 has finally arrived, we are ready to get down to work and get started on our Review in Progress. During the next few weeks, we'll take you with us on our journey through the game and give you our impressions as we go along before finally presenting our final review. Check out Part 1 and see what you think!
So here we are. Guild Wars 2 is a live, changing, tangible thing. For five years, we’ve waited with bated breath on every detail ArenaNet wanted to offer up. Now, the fun part comes: we get to see it grow, mature, watch its community develop, and we get to find out of a massive AA MMORPG can do the no-sub model from the start. Over the course of the next 4-5 weeks, I’m going to keep a running journal on my experiences with ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2. Like recent big releases, we’re calling these “a review in progress”. They will not be scored, but should do a decent job of explaining to our audience how we’re feeling about the game as we play it and work towards the official review. These games take time to play, and we’re not about to rush out in the first few days with some score based on beta weekend events. That’s not our style.
Read more of Bill Murphy's Guild Wars 2: Review In Progress Part 1.
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Comments
Montego and PAX? Maybe those "paid-for review" people were on to something.
Happy Thursday, Bill.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
My Guild Wars 2 Blog can be found here: Divinity's Reach
All valid points, I think the launch went fine considering it's scope but they really need to fix the trading post asap, it seems to be the number one issue people are bringing up. I've not played the WvWvW since beta so I'm not frustrated by the queue length yet. Another thing to note is the mail system is currently disabled; this is intentional though after the initial reports concerning account theft.
So do any of these issues put me off the game? Absolutely not, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game and agree 100% with the review thus far. The dynamic event system is a breath of fresh air and I think I'll find it hard to go back to a standard questing system now.
No lie- Not sure of its becoause its a new mmo- or a its been a lousy year for expansions and expectations of new games, but this game has me hooked all my free available time!
it dosent feel like a grind fest-nor a rat race to finish level cap (for game to begin)- it just feels 'Right' as an mmo should feel! in this decade.
well done Anet-cant thank you enough!
Yeah, I don't care about WvWvW but I see people complaining a lot. My only issue is the trading post being down. It was up for like 5 minutes yesterday then it got hammered by people and promptly crumbled apart again. I think they vastly underestimated the popularity of their game, it was evident when they had to raise the population cap on servers just in head-start because all of them were full and only more obvious with the trading post.
Otherwise, game's been the shining example of what an MMO should be.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Steam: Neph
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
Good Review imo. Personally other then the one day over weekend when they were down for 3-4hours? I have had no lag issues, no kick outs.. nothing...Enjoying my time exploring and not feeling at like i need to get to Max level. Most fun I have had since early Star Wars Galaxies and the very early days of WOW.
Cheers,
Faulkner.
Clickfest? As in you need to click your keys to use your skills? **looks down at keyboard** Um... what else are you supposed to do in any game? Unless someone comes out with some new hardware for the PC that is universally used sometime in the near future EVERY game is going to be a clickfest.
Ive seen plenty of Dynamic Events fail, especially once you get past the earlier ones. When the pop dies down in the earlier zones they wont seem so easy.
Same applies to how dynamic the events are. Early impression of it will seemt hat way because it was designed to break people into DEs. They become more complex and have bigger impacts as you progress further.
Im still under the impression you dont actually play and are simply taking peoples 1st impressions of the starting zones their 1st day or 2 playing as fact that the entire game is exactly like it.
haha i predict this review to be a very very high score.. I would use the term fanboy but i dont like it.. either way the guy loved GW2 before he even played it.. thats not how to go into a review..
He didnt mention how boring the Heart missions are.. collecting or killing tons of things over and over and over. He didnt mention the fact you can skip them if you like.
Also he didnt go into detail about how the so called Dynamic events in the starter areas all happen in in the same location just at random times and a lot of them are just as boring as the heart quests.
Still its the first part of the review so hopefully he will cover these later on..
Im not bashnig GW2 here by the way im just saying it how it is.. tho im sure some people will think im bashing fair enough.
While I agree with some of your points. High score =/ fanboy. Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean it's bad. It's personal taste. I don't like Rift, a lot of other people do, I could point out all the reasons why I don't like Rift, that still doesn't make it a categorically bad game. It only means that it doesn't suit my taste.
I don't really care for any Battlefield game or many other widely acknowledged good games. Does that mean that everyone else is wrong and they're bad games? Eh, they're probably all just fanboys right?
Steam: Neph
I remember the first weeks of WoW with long waiting-cues, a lot of technical issues, hundreds of bugs and certain content not even ready to be played.
I will be on vacation during september, afterwards I will buy Guildwars 2.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.
Come on you cant honestly say the heart quests are fun? The only reason people in my guild are running them is so they can get rewards for finishing each zone. Tho you are right we all do liek different things
It just sounded like he already loved the game before playing it and I for one dont want a reviewer to be like that with a game. MMORPG should have said to its reviewers ages ago right GW2 is out in a few years whos gonna do the review? Who ever it was should then have stayed away from getting too involved with GW2 until it was released
Anyway ill hold of until the full review is done
Agreed! exploration is just so awesome in this game. I am making a habit of not using the map and not talking to the scouts. I literally just roam around. Things happen and it makes it feel like an adventure, it reminds me of Skyrim.
Of course when I know Ive run most of the area Im in I will eventually look at the map to get some direction but its just so much fun to look at something far away and go to it, and sometimes you don't even make it because some event caught your attention and drives you in a totally different route and you end up asking yourself how the heck did I even end up here. Its great!
BTW that event in the human area with the little girl in the hole asking for help, pure awesomeness. I was with some folk running an escort mission and it had just ended, some of us started going in the same direction and all of a sudden the new event pops up and the girl starts asking for help, you are wondering were the heck is that girl. Until you find the hole
I really dont get it. You keep talking about the heart quests. Pretty sure anyone who paid any attention at all already knew theyre basically just your normal quests and are there mainly as a hub or a way to give people a purpose to explore around the map and interact in that area while encountering / triggering DEs in the process. With DEs typically notifying you when youre in the general area, most people wouldnt even know there was any in that area unless they ran into them in the process of doing the Hearts and Personal Storyline.
The heart quets offer a little more variety than normal quests, in that you can complete them usually by doing 3 or 4 different things instead of just 1, and theres more to a lot of them than simple kill or collect, but theyre hardly what anyone was interested in the game for. DEs and the Personal Story are the heart of PvE in the game, the hearts are just the filler.
~"Over the course of the next 4-5 weeks, I’m going to keep a running journal on my experiences with ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2. Like recent big releases, we’re calling these “a review in progress”. They will not be scored, but should do a decent job of explaining to our audience how we’re feeling about the game as we play it and work towards the official review."
Sounds good to me.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Bite Me
Well I've seen 94 - 100% in the other reviews so far so I expect it to be around there, it's currently sitting at 94% aggregate score on metacritic also.