Guild Wars 2 Previews

A lot of expectations seem to surround ArenaNet’s sequel to Guild Wars, and for those who didn’t get the chance to try the pre-orderers beta for themselves, we have rounded up a new batch of previews of the title.

Eurogamer:

Fantasy MMOs so often suffer that strange contradiction between the glory they promise and the mundanity they offer, and Guild Wars 2 is similarly guilty. Do you want to be a hero of Tyria, a legend whose name rings like a bell across the land? Then you’ll need to help out on the farm first by feeding the cows, or head to the monastery and deal with their grub infestation. One of the first challenges set before the warrior race of the Norn involves finding eggs that have fallen from their nests and daintily replacing them.

Though these gradually become more serious in their subject, such as a call to repel bandits or a raid on an army camp, much of the game’s quests still revolve around collecting or destroying a certain amount of X, where X can be monsters, sprinkler valves, even apples for a pie. Escorting caravans or defending a fort are more interesting challenges, but each still feels like a mini-game where the objective is simply to hit a target number, perhaps occasionally within a time limit. In time, ArenaNet promise that success or failure in these dynamic events will have a noticable impact on the game world, but over this beta weekend any changes were largely cosmetic.

IGN focuses on the Engineer profession:

The array of Slot Skills available to the engineer insures that you can play them in a variety of ways. If you want to be more of a tinkerer you can equip a number of turrets. For instance you could deploy a Rocket Turret to deal damage, a Net Turret to lock enemies in place and a Healing Turret to keep you in the fight. All of the turrets have whirring cranks and bronze bands on them, helping them stay consistent with the Steampunk aesthetic.

The engineer also gets a number of Skill Slot abilities that allow them to equip entirely new weapons (and change their weapon abilities as well). There’s the Flamethrower, which can set opponents on fire as well as blast them away when things get hairy or the Elixir Gun, which can damage opponents in an area as well as give allies buffs and heals. Additional weapons like grenades and mines help to make the engineer a versatile class that can be useful in a wide array of encounters.

The Koalition thinks you should believe the hype:

Traditional MMOs have you engaging in battles in a very simple turn-based manner: you target your enemy, you press skills, and you wait. Your enemy does the same, and you duke out a game of juggling cooldowns until someone dies. Guild Wars 2 features some elements similar to this, but turns that idea on its head. Instead of just targeting stuff, you have to also hit it. If I shoot a spell, an enemy can dodge roll outside of its radius, or hide behind a wall as the projectile is in the air. My sword swings have an arc that actually hits enemies around me these aren’t dated mechanics, this is the revolution of MMO combat.

These upgrades carry over into PvP as well. Maybe you are tasked with defending a castle from the attacking faction, so you could station Guardians near the entrance erecting spirit walls to prevent the other teams advancements. With the bottle-neck passage, you could have your elementalist rain down death on top of the group of enemies. But maybe they have a support Guardian as well, and he erects a barrier to protect them. The battlefield is constantly evolving based on the dynamic situations around you. Not one second is the same as another second Guild Wars 2 has that excitement, nothing else even compares.

Finally, Goozer Nation:

As there is no dps, tank, healer set up in Guild Wars 2, every profession is pretty well equipped to take care of themselves. Every profession can heal, dps, and revive. Death in this game works a lot like how it works in Borderlands. When a player’s heath reaches zero, they don’t die right away but are instead knocked down. The player is then given an action bar with special actions to attack nearby mobs. If the player manages to kill one, they will recover automatically. If they don’t kill any mobs within the allotted time, they die and have to return to a waypoint or be revived by a player. While a player is down, they can also be ‘˜healed’ by other players. This is like in other games where teammates can run up to a downed teammate to revive them. If the downed player is healed in time, they will recover.

Every player has an endurance meter. Endurance in Guild Wars 2 is different from most other games. It is not a stat, but rather a meter that refills automatically. As the player dodges to evade attacks, the meter goes down. If it drops too low, the player cannot dodge again until the bar fills up to a certain point. This isn’t like auto dodging from other games either. You actually have to press a certain key or double tap a direction to evade in that direction. This is similar to dodging in Mass Effect 3.