Another Guild Wars Beta Event

[SoulEdge]

How close is this game to release?  Beta testers, how's it coming along?

Well, two weekends worth of game time (WPE and December beta weekend event) are not really all that much for testing and bug catching, but it sure is enough to get me hopelessly addicted to the game.

PvP is not really my cup of tea, I can see myself participating in it once I have tried most, if not all of the classes, and when I have a better understanding of skills. Since I only had one PvP experince thus far, I can't comment on the PvP aspect, nor the class balancing, but I do think the system of matching up components can use some changing, being clvl 7 and being set up to do battle with clvl 20 was not fun...

PvE was all that held me for the past events, and I have really just tried the Elementalist class (spell caster, mainly offensive). Most of the time I was playing solo with henchmen, and I enjoyed it. When in a team with sensible players, the experience was just fantastic.

Forming team with random players are just like all other such random team in any multiplayer game, while sometimes one will be fortunate to meet good, polite, decent people, those who have played, say, D2 in public game will know all those other "interesting" people. But really, gaming with like-minded players is simply great.

There are still things to be done, chat system, trade system and more control over henchmen and pets. Crafting seems to be the only "grind" in the game, but the item drop rate had been tweaked and was much better in the December event, perhaps further tweaking is needed? I am one of the variant scums from your friendly neighbourhood, so I didn't really bother too much with items. ;) Also, some players complained the last event was too difficult, well, I don't know, I did the first two missions solo with henchmen and found them to be alright, and I know a person who did the first mission solo without henchmen (hi Sirian!). :lol:

Not sure how much content the current build has, and how much more to add, those in the close beta will have a better idea. Tried as I might, I didn't finish all missions, nor had I explored all those explorable areas, wish we get more time to play.

As I said, I am hopelessly addicted, but GW at the December beta event is more complete than the other games in beta that I have tried (Knight Online, Saga of Ryzom). I will buy the game if it is released now, since I have experienced how Arena.net fix things and how easy it's to get a new build of the game.

I really want it to be released now so I can play :w00t: but I think given a couple of months, the game will be nicely polished.

I hope the guild stash/personal stash system is implemented in the January event, along with those I mentioned above, Well, we will just have to wait and see.