Guild Wars Is up and Running.

[Jim]

Hi

I'm in the Game, it's 8:25pm EDT, I kill my 1st MOB :D

Due to overwhelming response to our E3 for Everyone event, we are pleased to announce that you may begin your Guild Wars experience early. Come, join us in Guild Wars now!

http://www.guildwars.com/

ps: It was to start @ Midnight tonight May 11th :o

[Artega]

I'm going to go cry in a corner now. The one game I most want to play, and I can't run it :(

[LochnarITB]

Oops, Thecla already posted this here. I played for a little bit this a.m. - time enough to get the first couple of quests. I'm trying to get other stuff done so can get back in and play some more. Have to make the most of the next 3 (4?) days. I think they are getting a lot out of this effort - thousands and thousands of testers - as they seem to be making changes and asking people to reload frequently.

[edit] I just hate asking epople - they never answer!

[Iolair]

I'm trying out some different types. I really like the ranger so far. I took necromancer as second, but I wish I had taken monk instead, so I had some healing.

I tried some cooperative missions. Hehe that was actually very fun. I like that I can switch between playing alone and go on missions with other people. There are even some PvP areas if one likes that, but I haven't visited those places yet.

I mostly go under the name Nyeva the second (or third or fourth), so say hi if you see me please! :)

[Dmitri]

Hey,

You're all welcome to join, folks =)

Speaking of changes, it's not actually about that.
Usually, we're having about 10 builds per day.

[Bolty]

Initial impressions, guys? Think we should have a beta forum for it when the time comes and evaluate it vs. WoW?

-Bolty

[Artega]

I'm really looking forward to Guild Wars, whereas I'm just so-so with WoW. My main gripe with WoW (besides the monthly fee; I don't have any major problems with it, but it does add up, especially when one is already paying for broadband access) is that it will likely be drawing from Battle.net for the bulk of its players; Diablo II Battle.net players, specifically.

I don't like the thought of playing an MMORPG with ub4r l33t typ3z!!!111. At least we could take refuge in a private game in Diablo and Diablo II. I'm going to hold off for a few weeks to wait and see peoples' first impressions (besides, that will give Blizzard time to get three patches out the door, in addition to the four that will be applied before the game even ships, Diablo II-style) before I jump in.

Guild Wars, on the other hand, caters to my natural "I-want-to-kill-you-dead" PvP tendancies, and the idea of instanced worlds is very attractive to me. AND there's no monthly fee! AND it looks amazing! What's NOT to like about this game!?

I'll probably play both and stick with the one I like most; my bets are on Guild Wars, but maybe WoW will totally blow me away.

[Thecla]

Initial impressions, guys?  Think we should have a beta forum for it when the time comes and evaluate it vs. WoW?

Well, after only a few hours playing the alpha, you should completely disregard anything I say, but here are a few random comments anyway. ;-P

As far as genre goes, Guild Wars is definitely not a MMORPG -- it's more like multiplayer Diablo with in-game towns and staging areas instead of a chat lobby. As far as I can tell, all the actual combat is instanced i.e. in private games (I think this is true of PvP too, though I haven't tried that at all). You can play in solo areas or take part in multiplayer missions. But GW is different from Diablo in that it's mission-oriented, instead of being driven by character building and an overall progression thorugh a story line. You get to take 8 skills into any mission, so it seems that a larger choice of skills is the main advantage of character development (don't know how significant building up equipment is in the game though). Playing solo areas seem like it will be pretty dry with the de-emphasis of character building, so I suspect the game will stand or fall on the multiplayer part. The missions in the alpha require a fixed number of players in a party (usually 4), which encourages grouping, but it's also a bit inflexible. So far I played with some ok people in parties (the minority) and people who would be (and probably are) right at home in public b.net (the majority). You obviously need well-balanced parties to succeed.

Combat is typical MMORPG auto-attack, pressing number keys to use skills as you see fit (not really my favorite I must say). The skills use mana and are on a timer (the main restriction, I think -- it reminds me a little of sacred). Health and mana recover quickly, so the game is designed for a welcome fast pace, but no potions (AFAIK) and the heal spell makes you very vulnerable (though you do have healing buffs from party members), so if you get in trouble in combat you can die very easily. I made a ranger/mesmer character (with the idea of archer+passive support curses), but so far I have to say the mesmer spells have been pretty useless. Also, maybe I just haven't figured out to use some of the skills, but I bought one called "throw dirt" that's supposed to blind monsters when they're in melee (my ranger cant stand too much melee, so I though this would be a good escape tactic when I attracted too much aggro), only to be chased all across a map by supposedly blind monsters.

Graphics are very good, and pretty system friendly, something like Dungeon Siege (yuck!). But, unlike the abomination-that-was-DS, GW is designed for multi-player from the ground up, and clearly has a lot of content in the missions, which are intended to have some variety and challenge to them beyond the standard "kill x and fetch y".

I don't know at this point if you should have a beta forum for GW (I guess that will depend in part on how much interest it attracts), but I do think it's worth keeping an eye on.

[LochnarITB]

The first thing to say is I'm having fun. However, I haven't decided if just the fun of trying something new and different or if it is something I would want to play long term. The spell/skill system is certainly different from what I am used to. My first blunder was to waste 95 precious gold (we're talking 3 gold being a w00t drop from a monster so far) on a gem to up the level of a skill I already had. Skills don't have levels, you either have the skill or not. Balance is an issue now too. My elementalist was getting walked on by monsters that my ranger cake walked through. That is probably a symptom of it still being in alpha. One point to note is that "leveling" is different now than it will be in the final game. All characters are set at level 15. Once you have enough xp to level up, it gets you one more skill point only. You stay at level 15. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention how getting skills is handled. You have to do two things to get a skill. You have to gain enough xp to be granted a skill point. You then must have a character type specific gem that holds the skill you want. This gem is then taken to a trainer who, for a fee, takes one of your earned skill points and destroys the gem and then adds the skill to your list.

I think it is too early to really know if Guild Wars should have a forum. It is definately still alpha and things could change drastically. They have the base here to build something really incredible but there is also a lot of room for total floppage. I would hope they take what they learn in this open alpha and run with it.

[Walkiry]

I intended to give it a shot last night, but then I got home, fired up City of Heroes and got in a Taskforce with some folks, finally dragging myself from the computer at 2:30 am.

I'll try again today. Really.

[Selby]

I don't like the thought of playing an MMORPG with ub4r l33t typ3z!!!111.

The problem is most MMORPG's cater to these types. And another good chunk require you to be ub4r l33t to access the endgame content, which is supposedly where the game gets "fun."

[Fragbait]

Hail fellow lurkers,

Gave it a shot today.
One thing first: Graphics are definitely good. It's nice to see such pretty realms, and the sky is brilliant...

Apart from that, I'm not much convinced. Played an Elementalist/Warrior. Connection quality wasn't fabulous I guess, but this game should be playable with a 50KB connection. Furthermore, I don't think that this all to modern 3D really is good for a game. At least not for my game, I should say B) . Must say that I didn't like it when Undeads attacked from behind.
Dying is very easy, and the interface isn't that self-explaining; they could have added a help page upon your first entering of the game (like DII had IIRC). Sometimes when joining a mission, I took a bit longer to load than the others obviously, because they were already fighting and dying when I entered the mission. When that happened I was swarmed by opponents at the mission entering point and died at once.

My char wasn't the melee fighter, yeah well, but I couldn't really do anything. I tried several spells, fire ones, I can't recall their names. They all did a bit of damage, but not enough. Furthermore I had to get close to foes for some of them, which mostly resulted in quick death. Sometimes I was able to flee and heal, though ;)

Interacting with others wasn't really possible (appart from heal other) or I may have missed it completely. Again, a tutorial help screen would have been helpful.
Walking around is still somewhat awkward, since you get stuck now and then and are put elsewhere when the game synchronizes you with the others.Above all, multiplayer games seem quite hard to me, maybe I'm just a noob... But these zombies are fairly hard to kill.

Played a singleplayer game for once, that was not bad, I even managed to kill a foe (whoa :o ). Well, I didn't manage to do it again, I somehow didn't find the option 'singleplayer'. Traveling on the map means loading for quite a time, and when you are there, next thing you know is that there are people over people everywhere trying to gather a decent party. If you embark one, eventually the quest may start (don't know what triggers it).
Perhaps it lagged to much on my laptop, but I think it's quite hard. Once my party tried a quest 4 times in a row and was defeated each time after about 1~2 minutes. Well.

In short: I like the great graphics, but I don't like the gameplay too much. But that could have been my crappy connection, or the fact that it's still a pre-alpha version.

Greetings, Fragbait

[LochnarITB]

Fragbait, I think most of your problems can be attributed to a slow(er) connection. There does seem to be a lot of content coming down the pipe. I think you might have missed some tutorial stuff too. Playing through the initial solo area, every time a new control was needed, an info window popped up showing how to do it. Maybe the timer was up and it disappeared even before the actual content finished downloading or maybe you somehow skipped over the first solo area, I don't know. As to your trying your fire spells, that is why I talked about balance issues. My first character is a fire elementalist. The spells just don't do enough damage to kill a group without dying. When I tried a ranger, suddenly the monsters were, at least comparatively, falling over with just a couple well placed arrows. BTW, the ranger has some issues too. She makes some shots that would make a Gunbound player proud. I've shot at monsters that were at the bottom of a canyon beyond a wall in front of me. Up the arrows went in a beautiful high arc - hit, hit, hit - dead monster - like shooting fish in a barrel.

If you have access to a fat pipe, give it a try through that. I think the experience would be different. There is a lot of potential there but we are still dealing with an alpha and have to expect a lot of issues and limitations.

[Fragbait]

Hi Lochnar,

You know, if I hadn't read this

Will I be able to play Guild Wars on a dial-up modem?

Yes you will. We are well aware that many users do not have broadband access, and we want the largest possible number of gamers to be able to join our game without being held back by technical issues like their Internet connection. We have designed Guild Wars to function excellently on a dial-up connection and our alpha testers confirm they have no problems with their connection, even testing from other continents.

before (from the Guild Wars FAQ), I wouldn't have been so disappointed. You know, I have DSL, well, actually sometimes just 1/4 of it, but that's still 192kBit/s or 24kByte/s at least, mostly I have a lot more (depending on how many of my three co-DSL-users hang on the pipe at the moment). So that shouldn't be an issue.

True, they're still in a huge developing period and constantly streaming data on the users pc, but that's their overall concept of patching anyway, so if that doesn't improve quite a bit, I foresee dark times for dial-up users.


Greetings, Fragbait

[Artega]

There's a difference between playing and playing well. Just because they said that it can be played over dial-up doesn't mean that you'll be getting optimal performance from it.

[Fragbait]

Hi Artega,

Seems like you urge me to quote in your face:

without being held back by technical issues like their Internet connection. We have designed Guild Wars to function excellently on a dial-up connection

Greetings, Fragbait

[Tal]

Keep in mind that the game is still in the Alpha stage - it could be that they have not tweaked it for dialup performance as much as they would like yet. I'm also sure that they have fewer servers available for the Alpha than they would for the Beta or even the retail versions.

[Fragbait]

Hi tal125,

Yep, I'm aware of that.
All what I was saying was that I'm a bit disappointed with the gameplay, but at the same time I stated that it's not unlikely because I never really liked 3d in such games, and because my connection might be a bit shabby at times. Usually it's about 50kByte/s though, so that should actually be enough. At least that's what I hoped. I do think that there are some other tidbits that aren't too nice, and I pointed them out.
Maybe I'm a bit critical because the Guild Wars crew is said to be quite good, and is said to have been the major crew behind the starcraft and diablo II games... <_<
Well - okay, I admit that I've been a bit harsh.
But only a bit :P

Greetings, Fragbait

[LochnarITB]

Well - okay, I admit that I've been a bit harsh.
But only a bit&nbsp; :P

Greetings, Fragbait

I don't think you were being harsh, but just telling it as you were seeing it. I wasn't trying to put down your observations but just noting that, at least for now, the connection does seem to make a big difference. When I first read about Guild Wars, I also saw the points that you quoted. I was a bit skeptical but had (and have) faith that the team could pull it off.

I just got done trying a party mission for the first time. Considering I am very much the lone wolf, it wasn't too bad. I tried starting the mission alone but was forced to form a party of 4. I haven't yet figured out if there is any other soloable area other than the initial solo area. I have figured out where most of the boss monsters and monster concentrations are in that initial area so I can play quite a bit by just refreshing that area each time I've finished smacking all the bosses. It will be a big disappointment, though, if the final doesn't have a great deal of solo content as they also bragged up in their initial what-it-is talk.

[Artega]

Hi Artega,

Seems like you urge me to quote in your face:




Greetings, Fragbait

*places foot in mouth*

I stand corrected ^_^