Guild Wars 2: Impressions From The Closed Beta

[Tim Colwill]

What are your specs btw?

I'm not exactly running a top-end machine (hopefully upgrade this year), but:

Windows 7 64-bit
AMD Phenom II X2 550 at 3.1 GHz
8 GB RAM
ATI Radon HD 4800 w/1GB video memory

It defaulted me to High on most of the settings, but even turning everything down to Low/Off didn't help pull more frames out of the big cities/battles, unfortunately

When it was just me on my own/smaller groups, it ran like a charm on the default High settings.

On a more serious note, the lag described in article frankly doesn't sound like 'LAG' that a local server will fix.. because from the wording of the article it seems everything worked FINE in smaller scale until the massed event.

Pretty much. Honestly for the 5v5 battles it was okay, the 10v10 battles... getting annoying, but the WvW stuff was cripplingly painful at times.

Note that when I say "okay" I still mean "what we're used to in Australia", which is still pretty bad by other countries standards!

I think half the problem with the lag is with engine/server optimisation, and I'm pretty hopeful it'll be ironed out soon. Unfortunately the game's mechanics are really quite latency dependent to enjoy play at the intended level, so a local server will help immensely even if the codebase is optimised.

Great review. Could you possibly elaborate on what Jon said? Just wondering whether he said oceanic servers were a possibility or highly unlikely.

His exact words where "I really don't know, sorry" and when I pressed him on it, he said he "wasn't remotely qualified to answer that question". He asked for another dev's input who was playing at the time, but they didn't/weren't able to answer.

Let me just say "NNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnoooooo...."
I'm a big fan of the point and click movement style in GW and I always held a small teeny tiny hope that it would still be included in GW2.

I actually didn't try click-to-move at all in the beta - it never occurred to me! I'm sorry, but I can't rule out whether it's gone or not. I suspect however that it might be, as I didn't see it in any of the control/keybinding options.

[Lord_PorkSword]

I actually didn't try click-to-move at all in the beta - it never occurred to me! I'm sorry, but I can't rule out whether it's gone or not. I suspect however that it might be, as I didn't see it in any of the control/keybinding options.

It's gone in GW2. Arenanet announced ages ago that due to the way combat works in GW2 click-to-move was removed early into development of the game.

[spitfires_son]

Grats

I'd like to do the same, but I really just can't be arsed looking for groups these days.

Haha cheers. Yeah looking for groups is difficult but with 7 hero parties now it's much much easier to do the Hard Mode content without the fuss of looking for people.

[Ruckus23]

Great review. Could you possibly elaborate on what Jon said? Just wondering whether he said oceanic servers were a possibility or highly unlikely.

His exact words where "I really don't know, sorry" and when I pressed him on it, he said he "wasn't remotely qualified to answer that question". He asked for another dev's input who was playing at the time, but they didn't/weren't able to answer.

Damn. Well thanks for trying and thanks for getting back to me; i'll try and stay optimistic

[Marcus Dunn]

As a longtime GW1 fan, seriously jealous you got into this

[Shrew]

I actually didn't try click-to-move at all in the beta - it never occurred to me! I'm sorry, but I can't rule out whether it's gone or not. I suspect however that it might be, as I didn't see it in any of the control/keybinding options.

I'm fairly sure it's a given that it has been, I seem to remember the Devs saying something about it a while ago; and as spitfires_son & Syncourt have said, it's a combat mechanic / environment thing.

EDIT : Yeah, what Lord_PorkSword said...


Still, its a shame imo.

[cozeh]

You really scared me with what you had to say about playing with 'lag' in your article.

Is there any way to get in contact with some of the dev team or even petition/raise awareness for an Aussie server? There's no doubt this game will be massive but as a really hardcore PvPer it'd be really disappointing to play with horrible pings :/ (considering the nature of the combat system)

Maybe internode/iinet could help us out in this regard =P?

Well played article tim!

[Ruckus23]

You really scared me with what you had to say about playing with 'lag' in your article.

Is there any way to get in contact with some of the dev team or even petition/raise awareness for an Aussie server?

Your best bet is tweeting them on their official twitter and posting on http://www.guildwars2guru.com

This thread http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/beta-review-games-net-t28215.html is about this review and about the need for an oceanic server. Dev's often post on this forum and hopefully some of them see the thread.

[TRB]

Let me just say "NNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnoooooo...."

Pure wasd movement sounds way to serious
Totally a step away from the casual play approach that I enjoy in GW.

Gotta have some way to give direction to their main combat mechanic

More importantly [and to the game's detriment imo], GW2 is being designed for console use, point and click doesn't work well on console, where they can map wasd to one of the thumb sticks.

[Marius]

I much prefer WASD mechanics. Age of Conan was WASD with side stepping, and I found it much more active than SWTOR.

The real issue is whether mouse movement will be allowed (hold LMB to move forward). Keyboard turning is slow.

And on the topic of Funcom, I find the article amusing when it says The Secret World will be copying GW2, when The Secret World is coming out first. Is any game really copying the other, or is it just a natural response to games like Aion, TOR, and WoW already having the 'standard' MMO market locked down? For multiple MMOs to exist and be successful, they'll have to start doing different things, and that's good.

But it's not copycat behaviour. More differentiation.

[spitfires_son]

More importantly [and to the game's detriment imo], GW2 is being designed for console use, point and click doesn't work well on console, where they can map wasd to one of the thumb sticks.

It's going to potentially be released on console, not for a while. They've said that their focus is on a PC MMO and best PC experience.

Sure point and click doesn't work for console but I wouldn't put a lack of it up to the fact that they were looking into console development early on.

I don't think there was or is any reason to get your nickers in a knot about them putting it to console though.

[Tim Colwill]

The real issue is whether mouse movement will be allowed (hold LMB to move forward). Keyboard turning is slow.

And on the topic of Funcom, I find the article amusing when it says The Secret World will be copying GW2, when The Secret World is coming out first.

Mouse movement is definitely in, but it's LMB+RMB like normal. You can't navigate by mouse on the map screen though, for some reason, which I found a bit odd.

By the TSW comment I was more referring to the fact that GW2 announced their combat skills system before TSW's (I think! I haven't checked the dates on their various announcements, but pretty sure it's just coincidence anyway. It's a really good system.)

[Syncourt]

Yeah looking for groups is difficult but with 7 hero parties now it's much much easier to do the Hard Mode content without the fuss of looking for people.

What's this? You can fill your own party up with heroes now?

That's freakin' awesome if so! I may just have to give it another go.

[Marius]

Mouse movement is definitely in, but it's LMB+RMB like normal.

Right... not sure what I was saying by hold LMB to move forward. No game does that.

[Bronze_D]

Yeah looking for groups is difficult but with 7 hero parties now it's much much easier to do the Hard Mode content without the fuss of looking for people.

What's this? You can fill your own party up with heroes now?

That's freakin' awesome if so! I may just have to give it another go.

you can with 2 players, each of you contribute 3, and you get a full party of 2 players, 6 hero...

I don't think u can do it alone.
scratch that, you can apparently do it alone now and add 7 different heroes... wow...