Bring on the weekend!

[Village idiot]

Another beta weekend about to get underway. Looking forward to getting back into the game for a while and having a muck around. Only downside is the wife is now liking the look of the game and severley cutting into my beta game time, haha.

Ohhh, and booooo.... A bit dissapointed at the level of discussion around this game on GoN. Come on, get your act together people's! I know that there's a pretty big interest in this game from the gon community from looking at the news threads etc.

Hope to eventually see some members in game somewhere.

[tranquil]

I'll be there! Got nothing planned all weekend either Insanely keen for this game, i have no idea what to do first once the beta goes live though.

edit: What time exactly will the beta be live for us Aussies? Just noticed the big fat countdown timer here http://www.guildwars2.com/en/ Looks like it will be 5am Saturday morning for us.

[tranquil]

Game is awesome! Anyone else playing? I'm on the Jade Quarry server, game name is Darkanik add me if you want.

[Marius]

They've made a lot of good changes since the last beta. Lots of balancing fixes and the UI is far better now.

Given that the game still lacks a firm release date, this is going to be one polished game at this rate.

[Village idiot]

Loving it. Played around with mesmer and ele so far this BWE. Pretty much solely played my thief last one.

I think the game looks amazing and cant wait for tax return time so i can upgrade my machine and max it out.

P.S Loving the crafting. I know many people find it annoying, but i love having to craft a number of separate parts to make an item.

[Mythor]

Been tooling around most of the day, a lot of it in WvW. Poor melee characters getting pasted all the time. Not sure what they're going to do about it, maybe nothing? Have melee classes be PvE focused?

And they made Charzooka cost way more skill points which is the saddest thing of all.

[tranquil]

Time for sleep..

Got to lvl 11 in PvE then spent the rest of my time in sPvP. Have not tried World PvP yet, will give that a shot tomorrow. Necro is good fun so far, more so in PvP though. Really want to play Ranger but i'm saving that for release as my main character.

[retaxis]

game was fun, although I choose the worst server .
All the PVE areas are dead empty which makes all the world events active and very tiresome for 1 person to do them.

Hoping next weekend someone has a good idea for a 2nd / 3rd oceanic server as sea of sorrows is full. (also hope they give us a server switch as I don't want to register my credit card just yet).

[Mythor]

You could go play as a Guest on a different server? Home server only matters for PvP, as far as I know?

[retaxis]

good idea in theory except guesting isn't enabled yet .

oh well, I maxed out personal story and hit level 22 so experienced most of the early game content (just would have been more fun with someone else playing beside me haha).

[Mythor]

good idea in theory except guesting isn't enabled yet .

Oh. Sorry, I hadn't tried it myself.

[Marius]

Been tooling around most of the day, a lot of it in WvW. Poor melee characters getting pasted all the time. Not sure what they're going to do about it, maybe nothing? Have melee classes be PvE focused?

And they made Charzooka cost way more skill points which is the saddest thing of all.

My melee thief is actually extremely viable in WvWvW.

Run her with focusing on acrobatics. Dodge up to the enemy line, scorpion wire someone out back into our lines, immobilize with venoms, do my own hit and run attack, and watch them get mobbed and slaughtered.

[Mythor]

scorpion wire

Ranged attack.

In terms of actually fighting in melee range, no, you get slaughtered. What you end up doing is goading the foolish to chase you or crippling people to prevent their retreat with the rest of a group, etc. You don't stand amongst the enemy bashing things over the head like you do in any other MMO with melee classes.

Any battle with more than about 10 participants and melee is a novelty or for people who don't mind running back from a waypoint when they get focus fired into the ground.
Better off equipping something with ranged options and sticking with the group.

[Marius]

It's more a form of crowd control.

Once the wire drags the enemy close, I fight with daggers. That seems quite melee-ish.

Every character seems to have a ranged attack, too, so we may as well call everyone in GW2 ranged. I did see warriors throwing their swords at people.

Ultimately, it's a good thing that melee need tactics, rather than just running in and mindlessly attacking.

You don't stand amongst the enemy bashing things over the head like you do in any other MMO with melee classes.

I don't know. SWTOR mass pvp was a ranged fest. All I really remember of Illum was bounty hunters and troopers trading fire at each other and jedi getting caught in the middle. Conan mass pvp was the same.

Melee is generally only viable in such situations when used in formation. In a pitched, random battle, ranged rules the day. To actually make melee viable, you need to support them with skirmishers like thieves, and melee need to support each other.

Melee is good for taking territory when properly supported, though. One of my better moments as a thief was using my wire to drag a defender off a siege weapon so the melee wouldn't get focused by it.

[TRB]

My 2nd beta weekend and I have to say I'm being bored by it.

Whats the real difference between this and rift as far as gameplay goes?

They even both have the same non-random random events that replay over and over again in the same place with the same NPCs no matter how many times they get beaten.