Guild Wars World Preview Event

[Astromarine]

why do you lie?

 

[Ortchel]

I didn't say everyone quit. I hope you are enjoying yourself.

 

[Human Shield]

I'm playing basically a pure Mesmer (second class is ranger but using a bow takes away energy boost shield). The class counters stuff and plays spells, it is tough to decide on which skills to take. Mesmer is probably the best tactical class. It is pretty fun in a group (I never take henchmen).

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, I'm done too.

I find the combat totally dull, especially long range where you have to desperately attempt to click on the enemies before your throng of henchmen ensconces them, making that task entirely impossible. Then, if you're lucky, you manage to get a shot or two off before your comrades cut everything apart, and you realize that it didn't make much difference anyway because theres virtually no strategy beyond clicking your skills in varying order.

I also thought the combat was utterly dull. Like you said, it boils down to clicking on a monster, then pressing a number to activate a special attack. I'm sure the special attacks might get more interesting later on, but.. Well, how interesting could it be if you're just pushing a number? At least in Diablo 2, you were using both mouse buttons and the function keys.

I also agree that party members get in the way a hell of a lot. I was always switching positions to get a better view of the combat just so I could initiate combat with a bad guy because a melee person was obscuring me.

The missions, as I think was stated earlier in the thread, are completely mind-numbing. Every mission goes something like this: receive vague goal from exclamation point NPC, fight through a painfully 'on rails', invisibly-walled in wilderness, accomplish goal, teleport to seemingly random neutral location and start all over.

What's worse is there's no sense of direction. One mission teleported people away. Well, I got a little lost and didn't actually teleport with the rest of the party. Sure, that's probably my fault, but we were all looking around to find the teleport area. None of us had any idea where to look for the thing, only it was in the "East" or something. So, we were all searching around and we were all separated.

So, they teleported without me and I never could find where they teleported from and getting directions from party people didn't seem worth it. Long story shortenned, I missed part of that objective, so I couldn't complete the mission just because I couldn't find that stupid teleporter.

It would be nice if they put a mission waypoint thing on the compass.. Then again, the compass is fairly useless too.

I found it strangely displacing to be standing among my 'companions' upon the completion of the first mission, receiving medals or commendation or something (a la the end of Star Wars IV) and wondering 'who are these people again?'

I'm a Knight of the Mantle, whatever the hell that is.

 

[Whipporowill]

Considering Rex has been scarce, we at least know he's enjoying himself... and the game of course.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Thus proving he enjoys anything - except cooking school.

 

[fnordcircle]

Who said it was great? Pretty much everyone here who played it, besides Exitium, has already quit.

About a bazillion people in threads on gaming boards and Exitium.

 

[Ortchel]

Well, I was talking about the people in this thread specifically.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will eat just because it's fed.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Yeah, I'm done too.

I'll bet.

I find the combat totally dull, especially long range where you have to desperately attempt to click on the enemies before your throng of henchmen ensconces them, making that task entirely impossible.

Eh, wtf are you talking about? Just press the CTRL key and all the names of the enemies on the screen will be highlighted, so you can pick them out pretty easily. If you click on the name the game's macro mode will even kick in signalling all of your teammates at what you're targetting. They can press T to select your target.

Then, if you're lucky, you manage to get a shot or two off before your comrades cut everything apart, and you realize that it didn't make much difference anyway because theres virtually no strategy beyond clicking your skills in varying order.

What are hell you talking about? Are we even playing the same game here? Experience is shared with everyone regardless of kills, so clerics and necromancers aren't left out at all.

Besides that, even though it might seem insignificant, I didn't like how if you want to specialize in melee you have to look like a pro football player or if you want to specialize in ranged combat you have to look like Legolas.

It was the same in Diablo II and many other games. I don't know what your problem is. You can always select warriors as a second class and look like Legolas (the Ranger) if you want to. I've seen necromancers decked out in swords and shields, though different types of armor isn't implemented in the preview, I've seen Alpha players wear nice stuff.

I hope the full game offers much, much more choice in character creation. Though, having said that, the Necromancers couldn't be much cooler, even if they've got permanent 'creepy arms'.

What more choice in character creation would you want? You're given a main class and a subclass. That's more than most games can offer. The spells in the preview are limited to roughly 8 per class, though in the full game there will be 75 per class (I've seen them in E3) and you can use 10 spells rather than 8 (at the moment), as Charms for the 2 extra spell slots seem to be disabled. They were enabled in E3, though, so I know how they work.

The missions, as I think was stated earlier in the thread, are completely mind-numbing. Every mission goes something like this: receive vague goal from exclamation point NPC, fight through a painfully 'on rails', invisibly-walled in wilderness, accomplish goal, teleport to seemingly random neutral location and start all over.

Wrong. You've obviously not played beyond 2-3 missions. If you played some of the later missions you'd know that there are a variety of ways to accomplish your goals, and even subquests. There are usually 2 or more ways to some areas, and the last mission in the preview (Where you have to liberate the Staff of Orr) has approximately 6 different entrances, all of which come with their own set of challenges and enemies to deal with, and even a subquest.

In the first mission after the Introduction there is a little path on the hillside near the end that leads to some magical shrine, which I assume is for some other quest in the final version. Back in E3, there were NPCs on the map during missions which gave you quests to do elsewhere. If you're bored of the instance missions you can always go adventuring in the "Explorable Areas", most of which contain quests. I've discovered 2 so far: Kill the Bandits and something else. I was bored yesterday, so I took a bunch of NPCs and went exploring.

Not too much phat lewt is implemented in the preview, so Runes, Upgrade Items and the like can't be found. There's quite a lot of content missing from the preview.

Then theres the NPC party members you can choose to take along for the fun, which display no personality whatsoever.

Personality? Christ. There's other players for that. The NPCs are called Henchmen for a reason: they're just there to be henchmen. They're not there to talk to you. It's an Action RPG, what do you expect? Baldur's Gate degree of interaction? You just ditch them after the mission's over. If for example you can't find a monk to party with there's always the Monk Henchman, which is infinitely useful.

I understand this is the game's way of encouraging you to form 'real' groups, but if you can't find one or choose not to be part of one you get stuck with a platoon of mime warriors. Even a 'Take that, villain!' would go a long way towards making you feel like you're part of some kind of group effort.

Uhhh, yeah. They're henchmen, not heroes.

I found it strangely displacing to be standing among my 'companions' upon the completion of the first mission, receiving medals or commendation or something (a la the end of Star Wars IV) and wondering 'who are these people again?'

Who asked you to play with strangers? It's the same with Diablo 2. You can play with a bunch of people you like to play with or you can play with a bunch of strangers, it's your choice. I don't see why you have to blame the game for implementing in-game cutscenes. You can always ignore the other people and follow the storyline on your own, as everyone did in Diablo II: singleplayer or multi.

And finally, the game needs a more substantial tutorial (and some freaking documentation, the website is a joke), 'get weapon out of crate' really doesn't cut it as far as tutorials go these days, even for a game with the combat depth of Dungeon Siege.

Eh, what? If you were paying attention during the tutorial you would have noticed the tooltips highlighting each of your basic spells and abilities and explaining to you how to attack. It isn't exactly a difficult game: in fact, it's very intuitive. I don't see why the developers have to pander to some dumbfuck 5 year old who can't even handle a mouse.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Glad I didn't jump in on it then. Then again, despite what anyone tells me, it's another MMORPG and I avoid those like the plague. Gonna take ALOT to get my interest peaked in an MMORPG.

Yup, it's an MMORPG that isn't an MMORPG, and there isn't even any monthly payment, unlike MMORPGs, nor treadmilling, unlike MMORPGs. Yet it's still an MMORPG because you say so. Go figure.

 

[Sol Invictus]

All in all the game is okay, but if you go with only computer henchmen it gets dull really fast.
Finding people is quite easy once you get used to it, so I suggest you group.

But there are henchmen for a reason! OMG WHY WUD DER DEVELOPERS PUT IN HENCHMEN IF THEY DIDNT WANT U TO PLAY WIF THEM?????????????????!!!!!!!!!ONE

YOU LIE.

The pvp was okay, but there was this bizarre time limit or something that killed everyone on the game. This happened several times and irritated me enought to quit playing.

There's nothing 'bizarre' about the time limit. The opposing team probably captured the center of the map before you guys did. Sigh. It's like quitting driving because you can't figure out how the gears work.

I understand this is balance issue, but you find loads of useless stuff there. And shops don't sell new stuff, but rather you need to find ingredients for new items. Ofcourse they aren't so easy to come by.

Loads of useless stuff = Salvage
Get a salvage kit from a merchant and salvage them for ingredients. It's amazing how so many people fail to grasp this concept.

I found the tutorial howeve well done, and explained everything you needed to know to get on with the game in most simple manner.

BUT ORTCHEL SAYS OTHERWISE OMG.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Why is this game so great? It seems like just another pretty MMO. Yeah, I know, its 'NOT AN MMO', but it plays about as crappily.

You know, you and a lot of people on this forum convince me that you are very stupid and closed minded. You could at least download the preview (It's 60kb) and try it for yourself. If you don't like it, that's fine, but going on about how it's utter shit without having tried it because it's an "MMO AND OMG I WILL NEVER TRY AN MMO EVARRRRRRRR! FUCK YOU ALL" just gets on my nerves.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Why is this game so great? It seems like just another pretty MMO.

Who said it was great? Pretty much everyone here who played it, besides Exitium, has already quit.

Bull fucking shit. Met thousands of people today. Guess they all quit, huh?

 

[Ortchel]

What more choice in character creation would you want?

I only meant aesthetically. Also, I know it was the same way in Diablo, which is one of the reasons I never could stand that game. Shallow, perhaps, but I like characters I can relate to in looks and in Guild Wars to do that I have to have 'creepy arms', so, for me more appearance choices would go a long way.

Besides that, obviously you've spent a lot more time with the game than I have, so I won't try and argue your points, but a lot of my problems wouldn't have existed if they'd offered any sort of real offline documentation, which I sited as one of my main issues with my experience.

Overall I just don't find it 'fun', the entire ordeal feels unnatural and disjointed to me, much the same way as I felt about Kult, which I also loathed and you also enjoyed .. so to each his own.

Edit:

Bull fucking shit. Met thousands of people today. Guess they all quit, huh

Like I said earlier in the thread "I was talking about the people in this thread specifically."

Saint and I are out to ruin Guild Wars for you, Rex.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Yup, it's an MMORPG that isn't an MMORPG, and there isn't even any monthly payment, unlike MMORPGs, nor treadmilling, unlike MMORPGs. Yet it's still an MMORPG because you say so. Go figure.

MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

Let's break this down:

Massively Multiplayer: Meaning lots of different people can play it together. Does Guild Wars allow this? That would be a check.

Online: Duh. And another check.

Role Playing: You create a character with stats and skills and level up and do quests and get the phat lewt. Yet another check.

Game: Again, duh. And again, check.

Nowhere in those definitions does it say there has to be a monthly payment or treadmilling. Pretty simple logic. Guild Wars -is- an MMORPG. And -not- because I say so. Kthx.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I also thought the combat was utterly dull. Like you said, it boils down to clicking on a monster, then pressing a number to activate a special attack. I'm sure the special attacks might get more interesting later on, but.. Well, how interesting could it be if you're just pushing a number? At least in Diablo 2, you were using both mouse buttons and the function keys.

About better attacks: they exist, most of them just aren't in the preview. I don't like warriors and their special attacks much, but rangers can pull off some pretty amazing stuff with the right skills, and are quite fun to play. There's only a few skills per class in the preview, but the final game has 75 skills per class.

I also agree that party members get in the way a hell of a lot. I was always switching positions to get a better view of the combat just so I could initiate combat with a bad guy because a melee person was obscuring me.

Press tab to scroll between enemies. You can also bind a key to select the closest enemy and attack it. Hence no clicking difficulty.

What's worse is there's no sense of direction. One mission teleported people away. Well, I got a little lost and didn't actually teleport with the rest of the party. Sure, that's probably my fault, but we were all looking around to find the teleport area. None of us had any idea where to look for the thing, only it was in the "East" or something. So, we were all searching around and we were all separated.

Sounds like a bad party with little to no leadership. Always use the minimap to stay close to your party and clicking on it allows you to ping certain areas on the map. You can even draw on the party map in order to coordinate with other players. The game can be exhiliratingly fun with good players with a constant strategy. Using CTRL allows you to highlight all the enemy names on the screen, so you won't click on your allies. Pressing ALT highlights all your allies and items on the ground. If you use CTRL and click an enemy a macro will pop up in the chatbox telling your teammates to press T to select your target. It definitely eliminates any sense of confusion you may have.

It would be nice if they put a mission waypoint thing on the compass.. Then again, the compass is fairly useless too.

How is the compass fairly useless? It's got more features than any other game I've played, short of Myth, which also allows drawing on the map. As for waypoints, they would be nice.

I'm a Knight of the Mantle, whatever the hell that is.

It's meaningless. It's just a part of the quest. You end up killing those guys.

 

[Sol Invictus]

MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game

Let's break this down:

Massively Multiplayer: Meaning lots of different people can play it together. Does Guild Wars allow this? That would be a check.

No. What the fuck are you talking about? You're limited to a party of 4-8 (depending on your mission) and nobody else can join. There's no 'camping spots' or open range hunting grounds where 200 + people fight the same monsters.

Online: Duh. And another check.

Diablo II was online, I guess that makes it an MMORPG, too.

Role Playing: You create a character with stats and skills and level up and do quests and get the phat lewt. Yet another check.

Game: Again, duh. And again, check.

How obvious.

Nowhere in those definitions does it say there has to be a monthly payment or treadmilling. Pretty simple logic. Guild Wars -is- an MMORPG. And -not- because I say so. Kthx.

Go look at the part where I said it wasn't massively multiplayer.

 

[Ortchel]

As much I was wanna support you to further Exitium's hilarious frustrations, I feel obliged to say that if you break it down to linguistics you're right, but MMORPGs have connotations much stronger than the dictionary meaning of it's acronym. Rex is (I think) saying that it's devoid of all those nasty connotations and it's got glowy shit to boot.

 

[Sol Invictus]

I only meant aesthetically. Also, I know it was the same way in Diablo, which is one of the reasons I never could stand that game. Shallow, perhaps, but I like characters I can relate to in looks and in Guild Wars to do that I have to have 'creepy arms', so, for me more appearance choices would go a long way.

What's a Diablo hater like you playing Guild Wars, then? Shouldn't you be playing Barbie's Dress Up?

Besides that, obviously you've spent a lot more time with the game than I have, so I won't try and argue your points, but a lot of my problems wouldn't have existed if they'd offered any sort of real offline documentation, which I sited as one of my main issues with my experience.

It's a preview. Since when did people make documentations for previews? It isn't a demo.

Like I said earlier in the thread "I was talking about the people in this thread specifically."

Sure you were, that's why you said 'everybody quit'.

 

[Sol Invictus]

As much I was wanna support you to further Exitium's hilarious frustrations, I feel obliged to say that if you break it down to linguistics you're right, but MMORPGs have connotations much stronger than the dictionary meaning of it's acronym. Rex is (I think) saying that it's devoid of all those nasty connotations and it's got glowy shit to boot.

You're the only people who call it an MMORPG. The developers, and the publisher call it a CORPG (Cooperative Online RPG). The media calls it that. But the RPG Codex calls it an MMORPG because it's an RPG that's online. Why?

You don't even have to play with other people, as you can use henchmen to accomplish those missions. And yet, it's still an MMORPG. Because you say it is.

 

[Sol Invictus]

You know, what's sad about most of you is that you'd probably call World of Warcraft a 'great game'. Oh yeah, it would also help if you actually read my posts instead of saying 'HHAHAHAHAH ITS AN MMORPG LOL U SUCK" as that's the kind of clueless shit that would even get you mocked on a CounterStrike forum.

I thought people here were supposed to be 'smarter' than people on other RPG forums? If you're not bashing Bioware or Bethesda you're probably sucking Tim Cain's dick.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

No. What the fuck are you talking about? You're limited to a party of 4-8 (depending on your mission) and nobody else can join. There's no 'camping spots' or open range hunting grounds where 200 + people fight the same monsters.

4-8 is still a group of people that get together to play. Therefore it is MMO. That's not just my consensus either. Go look up the myriad of Guild Wars previews out there. Now, I'm just proving a point since you wanted to take offense and lash out. I have my opinion and that's that. If you love the game, then more power to you. Nothing wrong with that. Play on. Just don't try and tell my it's not an MMORPG because the fact I don't care offends you. I really don't care.

 

[Spazmo]

Don't most MMORPGs put you into parties of 4-8 players? And even if it puts these parties into separate instances (I'm guessing it's like Diablo II games, if not, please correct me), isn't that much the same as instanced dungeons you get in WoW and other MMORPGs?

 

[Sol Invictus]

4-8 is still a group of people that get together to play. Therefore it is MMO. That's not just my consensus either. Go look up the myriad of Guild Wars previews out there.

I guess Dungeon Siege, Diablo, Diablo 2, Nox are all MMORPGs. Hell, by that logic any multiplayer-oriented game that requires a group of people to play would be an MMO in your book.

I hate to break it to you, but you're fucking stupid.

Now, I'm just proving a point since you wanted to take offense and lash out. I have my opinion and that's that.

I don't give a flying fuck about your opinion. It is asinine, and I'm calling you out for it.

 

[Ortchel]

What's a Diablo hater like you playing Guild Wars, then? Shouldn't you be playing Barbie's Dress Up?

Yes, touche. Silly me, wanting to play a role and choose appearance accordingly.

It's a preview. Since when did people make documentations for previews? It isn't a demo.

Obviously this is going to be a lot of peoples first and last experience with the game, if it were my brainchild, I'd want to make the best impression on these people as possible, since it's going to make or break it for a lot of them. Why lose potential customers because they couldn't even provide them with an offline keyboard chart?

Sure you were, that's why you said 'everybody quit'.

No, really, I was .. I don't know why you've gotten so hostile over this, I told you I didn't spend much time with it .. not looking to fight, Ex.