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Reviews; Reviews of games I have been playing.
Topic Started: Mar 27 2012, 12:59 PM (146 Views)
Dabrainbox
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The Intelligent Gamer
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I will be posting game reviews on this page, starting with Guild Wars 2 beta some time soon.
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Dabrainbox
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The Intelligent Gamer
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Lets start by admitting that I was in the Guild Wars 2 beta last weekend. I didn't get a press copy, so there won't be any videos (my email address was watermarked all over the screen) but now that the Non Disclosure Agreement has been lifted I'm free to give you some of my thoughts on it. I was wondering how to do this and I decided I'll start with a first impression.

Epic music. First thing I noticed when I booted up the client was the awesome music, it sounds a lot like the Baldur's Gate music with a touch of the grandiose feel given by Skyrim's tracks; it fits the medium brilliantly. Okay, after I'd sat there listening to the music for a while I decided it was time to log on. An error box popped up telling me the username/email address or password was incorrect. It was only after slowly retyping my password a couple of times that I realised the problem - ArenaNet doesn't like Gmail, I had to put my email address as @googlemail.com - and I was in. I was a little disappointed to find out that the Silvari and Asura races were still locked, but I leapt in with an idea in mind; a big, burly, Norn elementalist - a tribute to Samiel Fireborn from my Skyrim series. The character customisation screen was somewhat limited in scope, but it was simple to make a unique character while not giving people the option to create utter freaks. The questionnaire style backstory is a process not to be taken lightly and can seriously affect quests further in, however it did seem (again) a bit limited in scope, probably for much the same reason.

The tutorial was one of the best I've seen in a videogame, especially for an MMORPG, and culminated in the slaying of a gigantic Ice-Wurm, an event NPCs will often refer back to (the tutorial is racially based). It gives a sense of accomplishment that makes the player feel good about themselves while still covering all the basics quickly, efficiently and effectively enough to produce a smooth learning curve. Graphically, the whole thing was had a great style, but it was a little glitchy, with the skybox showing through scenery even with the graphics slider turned to "Best Performance" although I am given to understand that this is a problem with the unusual graphics card setup on my laptop which should be fixed for the full release. The UI was intuitive and very pretty, if unusually large, but it didn't distract from the gaming experience.
questing was fun and impacted on the world in very visible ways. There were some problems, but that is what the beta is for after all.

There are three main types of "quest" though the term doesn't do the system justice: help quests are tasks done to help an individual, these have no impact on the world but do open up the quest giver as a karma vendor; instanced story quests seem like they belong in a single player game, but add a sense of narrative and can be done as a party (all quests scale to the number of people participating); finally, the railed events were my favourite.

A player would trigger the quest - by talking to an NPC, or killing a mob, or completing the previous quest, or simply entering the area - at which point the event would pop up on the tracker of every player in the area and (this is the crucial point) they could join in whenever they wanted. It was a simple, genius step that put the MMO back into MMORPG. Any player could just leap into the action, help out and receive credit based on their performance whether or not they were there when it finished. This drop-in/out questing made for one of the most unique experiences in the MMO world. The railed event quests are so called because they exist on a path that can go either way. Say the players failed to stop a bunch of Grawl invading a town (they still receive credit), at that point the Grawl would actually move into the town and the next event is to take back the town for the inhabitants. If they push back the Grawl from the town, the next event might be to keep advancing into their territory and kill their leader. The quest continues on this chain based on player input.

The dynamic world that the event system creates makes Guild Wars 2 feel truly alive, in MMORPGs at the moment it feels as if other players only exist for raids and to steal the kills that we needed for the same quest that they were doing, in Guild Wars 2 other players can provide much needed help as you struggle alone with an event, or make you feel like part of an army in a pitched battle, or simply a rag-tag bunch of adventurers banding together to take down a tough enemy. I regret that I never had the chance to sample the PvP or World v World v World (perhaps because it wasn't clear how to access them) which have been much touted by the reviewing community; but from what I saw, ArenaNet have created a truly revolutionary MMORPG.
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