Guild Wars 2 Info and Discussion

Bit of new info:

1) Laugh, Dance, Cheer, Air Guitar, Drums are all emotes. However, my Charr had yet to dance, do an air guitar, or play the drums. I know they will be added because it said something like "you break out and dance". Sadly, the Charr didn't do it. Also, if I typed in something like /dasfsa it would say "unknown command" or something, but if I typed /airguitar… it did nothing, so I'm nearly positive these emotes will be in Guild Wars 2. Oh, and /wave and /point are there as well. Wave is pretty cute on a Charr.

2)Engineers and Necromancers, you guys get your first utility skills at level 3. Thieves get theirs at 4 (I never reached that level sadly). Necros and Engys, you get your rifle turrets and bone minions at level 3, so you really start getting to try your class at a fairly low level.

3) You really get a feel for the game early on. The controls are simple. On problem I have is B being the dodge, although I'm sure in the initial release it can be changed. Z lets you look at your characters front, and look behind. X is to sheath/unsheath weapons. You can also double tap WASD to roll in that direction. Jumping is, as you guessed it, spacebar.

After my turn, my friend was next, and he played an elementalist Sylvari, and I learned a lot from watching him play. Oh, and here's the best news…. HE PLAYED EARTH MAGIC. So… a few things….

1) Earth Magic is as updated as the other attunements. Each weapon/weapon set grants 5 useful skills, including underwater gameplay.

2) Elite skills/utilities used on land are also used underwater. Tornado, when used underwater, has a different animation. Rather than being a Tornado, you're a beautiful blue "black hole" type object and the skill acts the same way, except with a Z-axis as well. You're basically a Sphere of Chaos and anything you hit gets hit pretty bad.

3) I didn't see one person in my 3 hours of viewing the demo stations beat the Elite Event about the "Ash Horizon". EVERYONE, however, beat Tequatl. The reason no one beat the boat was because it had a time limit of about 8 minutes to defeat it, while spawning tons and tons of adds. Failed events still give rewards, although since no one succeeded in the only event that I saw be failed, I don't know if the rewards were lesser than if had been succeeded. The followup was to take the camp back, which was basically destroy all the adds.

4) For the purpose of the demo, the Dynamic events constantly happened. The Scout system also works. when I was playing my Charr, I had fellow Charr run up to me and tell me about some Dynamic Events. I also got to stop a brawl between 4 members of each legion (so I total of 12). Since I made my character be a dick that uses ferocity, I just ended up hurting them until their health was low.

5) To learn new skills, at this stage in the game, you MUST kill the enemies. Simply attacking and moving on won't help. Since in the event I just mentioned I didn't actually kill anyone, I never progressed in learning my next skill. Hopefully that is changed.

6) Creatures seemed to be a bit more aware of you if a Dynamic event has more players. People complained about how creatures randomly did a 180 and are now looking at you, rather than realistically turning their bodies to look at you. This seemed to only happen if the creature didn't care about you at all, and you aggro'd it. If the creatured had anything to do with you, it turned around normally.

7)While waiting for my turn, the person before me was a human. It appears that instead of defending the garrison to enter it and start the boss fight, you can actually go around the Garrison and see Logan already fighting the Earth Elemental. Killing it is the same as if you took the other, longer steps you were suppose to do. Hopefully this is fixed.

After playing the game, we went to the Dynamic Content Panel. There was Eric Flannum, Colin Johanson, Jonathon Sharp, Izzy, and a guy that called himself "Colin's minion". A few things mentioned in the panel that are worth reading.

1) Guild Halls will NOT be in the initial release of Guild Wars 2. There will instead be a housing method. Keeps, however, will be a good place for Guilds in WvWvW (although he didn't elaborate).

2) When asked about Crafting, Flannum mentioned that it is impossible to know if something such as crafting is X amount of percentage done, since anything can be added to it. Same with Dynamic events.

3) Dynamic Events now have a template, so it's MUCH easier for ArenaNet to complete a Dynamic event. They said it takes roughly 6 hours to make Dynamic event, starting from scratch, and the longest so far has been 2 months, which is Tequatl.

4) Dynamic Events likely do not need to be beta tested during the beta testing. This helps prove ArenaNet's point in having a short beta test. Before a Dynamic event is added into the game, it goes through, what they called a "Q&A" testing. To add a Dynamic event, they need to speak to the personal story, the artists, and the content designers to make sure it works with the lore, works in the environment, and doesn't get involved in other Dynamic events (The example used was an escort event being escorted through, let's say, the Tequatl event). So, every Dynamic Event you see right now is likely 100% completed unless other chains are added onto that previous chain. These Dynamic Events that we see and hear of have been tested for bugs and by the rest of the ArenaNet staff. This will save a load of time for them in the beta. The reason Tequatl took so long is because they were going to have him somewhere else I believe, but ended up deciding to put him in that zone, so they had to redo the process of the lore, the environments, ect.

5) Colin mentioned that they want to showcase how they want their game to look, so, just because the demo looks incredibly polished doesn't mean the entire game is at this point, although the way they were speaking, this game is certainly going to be here very soon. If not this year, likely very early next. (That is my speculation). So, everything they want to showcase is very polished.

6) There are roughly 1000 skills total in Guild Wars 2. This includes all profession skills and all environment skills across 8 professions. They still did not mention anything on the 8 profession besides jokingly saying that they already released 8 professions (commenting on the Cammando spoof). They again said it will be here "before the end of the year". He specifically said before, not by, for those that like to misinterpret it.

7) There will be LOADS more skins than Guild Wars 1, especially endgame

8) They kept referring to "Michael" in the back, after mentioning how much of a nightmare it is to test the Dynamic events. He replied with a smile, "I like to call it a dream". When referred to again, he said in a childish, sarcastic voice, "I love testing!".

9) Eric Flannum and the rest of the panel reminded us how excited they are to release the game and assured us they are trying their hardest to release it as soon as possible but as polished as possible.

10) Crafting supplies are best gotten via gathering and salvaging, according to the panel (I believe Izzy said it).

11) It was said that the average skill goes around 12 changes before being completed. Some take 1 or 2 tries, some (primarily elites), take 30 before being right. This is what was answered when Eric was asking his panel the process of creating a skill

12) Colin Johanson still has yet to swing a sword, and thus, he hasn't swung it again yet either.

13) Elite skills now have 180 second cooldowns, rather than 12 minute cooldowns.

14) There will be no GvG (I didn't learn this at PAX, but thought about adding it since no one really has brought it up)

15) There will be a lot more cross-profession combos. The reason so little have been shown is because they are waiting on the 8th profession/all the professions to be revealed before they show off all cross-combo professions

16) You do not need to Stealth to Steal (I actually learned this in the demo).

17) The "All red" and "All blue" in PvP is just a placeholder. According to Flannum, you will be able to customize your armor colors a bit and still have a way to show which team you are on (crosses fingers for capes). So don't worry, you won't be an all-red guy in World PvP.

Powered By