Poll: Guild Wars 2 Beta Thoughts?

[ShadowsofHope]

Waiting for open beta. Not really feeling optimistic about it, considering they forgot about fans who spent a LOT of money on game (two accounts with Trilogy + EotN) and played the game since the beginning (my oldest character just finished 5 years, and my main account is almost 6,5 years old). No beta invite. Kind of disappointed, though not surprising after Eye of the North.

You have to prepruchase the game since they will send you the code (or if you bought the package the code is inside) in order to play the beta.
The beta is not over as they will have another beta weekend for every end of the month until the official release.

Well aware that I have to pre-purchase the game.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you" instead of "Buy our next game!! then you'll get a chance to see it!".

Unless there's some actual open beta, they lost me to Diablo 3.

In case you weren't aware, the Hall of Hero's from EoTN will return in the Norn area and have exclusive items at each returning GW1's player beck and call decided by all the different achievements the player had completed over the course of their playtime, including armor, mounts, powerups, etc.

As for long time players getting instant access into the beta's.. why? No company that I'm aware of ever does that, and really doesn't have any reason to do so. Hell, no one even had to subscribe to the game to play it, only their time was being consumed. And, the incentive should be playing the game that is the sequel to the one you loved playing, not being rewarded for how long you have been a fanboy. Seriously.

In Diablo 3's open beta, the beta was really, really small in terms of explorable area's and story progression in the first Act. Guild Wars 2 was much larger in these respects.

 

[WoW Killer]

I was in the closed beta so my mind was already set on "pretty damn good, but might not be exactly what its fans were hoping for". Though I had a scare with the lag at the start. I went through the closed beta without a single wiff of lag, but with it it's a totally different game as I'm sure you can all understand. When you have an Ettin take a great big slow telegraphed swipe at you, and by the time he swings you're behind him and 12 foot away, but then you still get hit... yeah, that defeats the point of the game. I was glad when they seemed to have sorted that out. If they have those kind of problems after launch it'll break the game. The gameplay is spot on so long as your latency behaves itself.

Is anybody in the know about video editing and uploading? Like I want to take snippets of avi files from fraps and put them together in a video, maybe with a voice over and with some fading in and out. What freeware can I do that with? And what sort of compression should you use when uploading to Youtube?

 

[targren]

NB: Guild Wars "Hardcore" player - 50/50 HoM here. Needless to say, I was a fan of the original.

That said, the game was, while I could play it, disappointing. I'm not going to complain about lag, bugs, or lack of optimization, since I know what "beta" means.

That's not to say it's a BAD game by any stretch of the imagination. It just didn't live up to expectations. Other than the names of places, races, and skill callbacks, there's really nothing of Guild Wars in the game.

"But Targren," it's been said, "It's a completely different type of game! ANet is finally making the real MMO they've always wanted to make. How can you expect it to be like Guild Wars?"

"Because, grasshopper," I would reply with patient serenity, "It's Guild Wars 2. It takes place far enough in the future from the last game that the story isn't really tied to it, and if they weren't courting fans of the original, they could have named it anything else."


But, never let it be said that I'm not even handed. So I did put a lot of thought into judging it on its own merits.

As others have mentioned, the tutorial really needs to be buffed up. It takes too long to figure out what's going on, how public events work, etc. I put in 20 hours into the beta and I still am not quite sure how most of the events I played through 5-10 times (in Shaemoor) are actually TRIGGERED. I just sort of hung around in the area and hope'd they'd start. Hopefully, that's something addressed by release.

The vaunted combat system is a little too frantic. Between the fact that any event done right is basically a mass charlie-foxtrot, and the flooding particle effects making it barely possible to follow the action, the nuances like "dodging" don't really have as heavy an effect as they might have intended. Add in a crazy amount of PBAoE (point blank AoE, a.k.a. anti-melee AoE) and characters like the "glass cannon" thief run into a big problem in melee. They've done away with holy trinity roles like "Tanking" but kept the one-shot-kills toward squishies dumb enough to get too close (how do you retreat from combat if the first hit downs you?)

There are some balance issues that bother me. I can see the logic for making fast-travel a money sink, but I really think that having to pay money to rez at a waypoint is a little excessive, considering that you're already going to have to pay to repair your gear, plus you've more than likely got a good hike to get back to where you died. It's also unduly hard on low-level players. 15 copper on top of repair fees is a lot when you're derping around shaemoor fields, and by the time you get out of there, it's nothing at all. So there's really no point to having it there, IMO.

My last big worry is the cash shop. I said from the day that they started selling "Mercenary Heroes" that we'd have to worry about them selling power. I was, alas, not wrong. The standard power-boosting fare of XP buffs, item drop buffs, etc... are available on top of the normal, pointless-but-fun cosmetic stuff. Particularly insulting are the "mystic keys," lifted straight out of TF2, and the fact that you can trade "gems" (the cash shop "tokens") for gold, legitimizing gold-buying as a gameplay mechanic. How badly that works out, I suppose, is going to depend on how much gems cost, both in terms of real cash and in gold, but I don't foresee it ending well.

For a "social" game, the communication system is woefully inadequate. No Zone chat at all, just a "local" channel which seems to just cover some arbitrary radius.


Now, lest I give the impression that I only had complaints, some of the good things:

The game is gorgeous. Full stop. I have no complaints about the aesthetics, at all.

I was afraid I'd hate the new weapon-skill system, but I really enjoyed it. It takes about 50 kills to unlock all 5 weapons for a particular loadout, but I've always liked a little grind. Most of the achievements seem a little pointless, but they're basically just titles renamed. Giving points for them seems a bit too XBL-like and has no real purpose, though. It would be better if you could do something with them.

I like that I get a "completion" status on every load screen. Great for a completionist whore like me.

 

[9thRequiem]

Played the entirety of the weekend, and loved all of it.

The combat is fast, and yet extremely tactical. It changes greatly depending on what class you play as, but you really need to watch your surroundings. The "look at the game, not the UI" really comes into its own; Past the starting areas, you need to keep an eye on your enemy and what they're doing. If you're a ranged class like the Elementalist, you need to know where to move to, and how to keep the enemy at a distance. As a warrior (which I spent the most time on) you need to know which attack animations are going to hurt and need to be blocked, interupted or dodged, and which are OK to let land. The big issue with this though, is that on the crowded boss fights, you can't see the attack animations for the fireworks, which leads to a lot of pain.

The classes all feel very flexible, and yet keep a separate flavor. Each will carry a mix of damage and support while none will carry it all, so yes, the trinity is gone. My favourite class being the warrior, because in the skill selection all were distinct and yet could fit together well - I ended up taking a pair of maces for melee shutdown, and a rifle for single target ranged damage. The way many of the utility skills worked made it simple to aid others - I had a shout that buffed all nearby allies, and another that res'ed allies if I killed a foe in 10s.

The dynamic events were a mixed bag. There were some incredible epic fights against giant foes, some defense against hordes, but also some that were just kind of awkward slugfests. The difficulty needs some balancing too - they're supposed to scale with number of people involved, but that often meant either too few and it was too hard, or too many and it was too easy.

The overflow needs some tweaking to stop it getting in the way of friends playing together, but it beats queuing, so I can't hold it too much at fault, but it does need a solution before release.

Can't speak for the easy-to-understand side - I had a full weight of a lot of reading behind me, and had no problems working out what to do. I had a few friends play who'd read little more than the profession list, and they found it OK but I can't say they didn't miss anything.

Community is good. The downed / defeated part comes into its own when you have people willing to help, and I've been on both sides of someone putting themselves at risk to help out someone they'd not even spoken to. In fact, coming to help out led to the more epic fights of the weekend. I think I saw more "thanks" said in one weekend than in months of Rift / TOR.

So overall : Super positive. There are a few issues, yes, but that's why it's beta not release. It's definitely shaping up to be something truly incredible.

 

[Abedeus]

Waiting for open beta. Not really feeling optimistic about it, considering they forgot about fans who spent a LOT of money on game (two accounts with Trilogy + EotN) and played the game since the beginning (my oldest character just finished 5 years, and my main account is almost 6,5 years old). No beta invite. Kind of disappointed, though not surprising after Eye of the North.

You have to prepruchase the game since they will send you the code (or if you bought the package the code is inside) in order to play the beta.
The beta is not over as they will have another beta weekend for every end of the month until the official release.

Well aware that I have to pre-purchase the game.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you" instead of "Buy our next game!! then you'll get a chance to see it!".

Unless there's some actual open beta, they lost me to Diablo 3.

In case you weren't aware, the Hall of Hero's from EoTN will return in the Norn area and have exclusive items at each returning GW1's player beck and call decided by all the different achievements the player had completed over the course of their playtime, including armor, mounts, powerups, etc.

As for long time players getting instant access into the beta's.. why? No company that I'm aware of ever does that, and really doesn't have any reason to do so. Hell, no one even had to subscribe to the game to play it, only their time was being consumed. And, the incentive should be playing the game that is the sequel to the one you loved playing, not being rewarded for how long you have been a fanboy. Seriously.

In Diablo 3's open beta, the beta was really, really small in terms of explorable area's and story progression in the first Act. Guild Wars 2 was much larger in these respects.

Guild Wars 2 had an open beta? Didn't realize it.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you"

Yeah, if only they gave dedicated GW 1 players, i dunno, sweet exclusive weaps, pets, armour, titles...

They also give it to anyone who bought the game just before release and managed to get those 30 points.

Or someone who bought account second-hand off ebay for few bucks to get the weapons.

Again, it's the "old-timers vs newcomers" thing. Old-time players get exactly the same things new players get. What's the incentive for the old players to play the game? Pretty sure if I got to play the beta, like I had the chance with Diablo 3, I might've considered pre-purchasing it.

Now, not so sure. Already pre-ordered D3, and if it wasn't coming out this year, I would've went for GW2 instead.

So... Essentially because they weren't treating you super special compared to the rest, your not going to preorder it?

Well, that plus constantly ignoring the loyal playerbase for some time now (power creep in PvE and ignoring PvP balancing, removing Xunlai Tournament House because they didn't want to try fixing it, releasing a PvE-only expansion that betrayed the original vision of skill > time spent playing game). I'm not that angry. It's just my explanation of why I won't blindly pay a company that has given me nothing to make me want to pre-order their game. Blizzard did give me the option of trying the game and seeing for my own how it works out.

Blizzard isn't exactly known for giving extensive betas in Diablo games. Diablo 2's demo was one class (Barbarian) up to level I think 10 (a lot less compared to D3) and only two first quests (as opposed to a couple of quests from Act 1 in D3).

 

[Tanakh]

Other than the names of places, races, and skill callbacks, there's really nothing of Guild Wars in the game.

The game is gorgeous. Full stop. I have no complaints about the aesthetics, at all.

The architecture and aesthetics were one of the few, very few things that i considered amazing about GW 1; GW 2 inherits that, you can tell you are in the same fantasy world just by how the builds are designed and decorated, and some of the mechanics (thankfuly not a lot of them, not that much of a fan of GW 1).

As others have mentioned, the tutorial really needs to be buffed up. It takes too long to figure out what's going on, how public events work, etc. I put in 20 hours into the beta and I still am not quite sure how most of the events I played through 5-10 times (in Shaemoor) are actually TRIGGERED. I just sort of hung around in the area and hope'd they'd start. Hopefully, that's something addressed by release.

I love discovering the mechanics of games rather than read them, that's why i love games like Neo Scavenger (a spiritual successor of Fallout 2 that you should go and play right now!). But you are right, the game does not hold your hand. AFAIK the events either trigger due time (most of them i belive) or due talking to a NPC, rezzing an NPC, killing a specific NPC (very rare).

The vaunted combat system is a little too frantic. Between the fact that any event done right is basically a mass charlie-foxtrot, and the flooding particle effects making it barely possible to follow the action, the nuances like "dodging" don't really have as heavy an effect as they might have intended. Add in a crazy amount of PBAoE (point blank AoE, a.k.a. anti-melee AoE) and characters like the "glass cannon" thief run into a big problem in melee. They've done away with holy trinity roles like "Tanking" but kept the one-shot-kills toward squishies dumb enough to get too close (how do you retreat from combat if the first hit downs you?)

"Dodging" is around 0.5 secs of complete invulnerability on demand and on a short CD! If used good you can't be killed as a thief in 1v1. And yeah, if you just jump into the fray in WvW as a thief, you will die soon afterwards; but i have had some good kills with careful planning, and if you are defending a keep for example then you can double pistol DPS/reduce armour a target, dagger heartseek down him by jumping into the enemy zerg, spam kill and double dagger vanish into utility vanish, all sprinkled with evades. It's true that you will go down like a rock if you are caught flatfooted as a thief, but they are almost impossible to kill otherwise.

I can see the logic for making fast-travel a money sink, but I really think that having to pay money to rez at a waypoint is a little excessive, considering that you're already going to have to pay to repair your gear, plus you've more than likely got a good hike to get back to where you died.

This will be adressed, there was enough QQ on /local and the forums about being locked out of rezzing due the waypoint fee to think otherwise.

My last big worry is the cash shop. I said from the day that they started selling "Mercenary Heroes" that we'd have to worry about them selling power.

On the fence about this, if they sell XP, medium tier weaps and usless vanity stuff, fine, even if they sell you out of grinding by giving you point boosts and gold boosts... xcept... well in WvW gold is a huge deal, with gems you can literally buy siege and golems. With just 1 golem our world conquered all of the eternal battlegrounds and most of the green world, i can see how easy it would be to buy your win in WvW and that is unacceptable.

 

[targren]

"Dodging" is around 0.5 secs of complete invulnerability on demand and on a short CD! If used good you can't be killed as a thief in 1v1.

That's the problem. Even in PvE, you're VERY rarely going to go 1v1 once you leave the first noob zone. And it's not just a matter of "running into WvW when you're not ready: it's no good dodging when you can't see the telegraphs that you're going to have to dodge because of all the particle effects, like I said. And outside of mobs, once you get to 2 or 3-on-1 on-level mobs, you'll be burning your dodge bar on the first and then the others have free rein to wail on you while it recharges, so you pretty much have to go ranged (yay Dancing daggers. I LOVE that move).

 

[GrandmaFunk]

I greatly enjoyed my weekend in GW2, mostly just walked around exploring and doing random events or heart quests I came upon.

My only real gripe was with the mesmer illusions which need some kind of overhaul. They're meant to provide a minimal amount of distraction to allow you to evade mobs a bit more easily, since you're just so damn squishy, but I rarely ever saw mobs target them and I died, a LOT.

but even though the combat frustrated my, I was genuinely having fun the entire time and can't wait to be able to dive into the world for keeps and really build my character up.

 

[Tanakh]

That's the problem. Even in PvE, you're VERY rarely going to go 1v1 once you leave the first noob zone. And it's not just a matter of "running into WvW when you're not ready: it's no good dodging when you can't see the telegraphs that you're going to have to dodge because of all the particle effects, like I said. And outside of mobs, once you get to 2 or 3-on-1 on-level mobs, you'll be burning your dodge bar on the first and then the others have free rein to wail on you while it recharges, so you pretty much have to go ranged (yay Dancing daggers. I LOVE that move).

PvE aside (i went only up to lvl 15 areas, and up to there don't remember being forced into more than 1 vs 2, and with careful pulling and snares that turns into 1v1 two times), in pvp if you find yourself into 1 vs 3 then you already failed and unless the other guys are dumb, you should die.

As for particles... i honestly wouldnt know, i NEEDED to turn everything but textures and shaders to minimum in order to be able to have a somewhat playable FPS during WvW sieges, and with those settings you can easily see what you need to without being annoyed with too much trash on screen.

 

[targren]

PvE aside (i went only up to lvl 15 areas, and up to there don't remember being forced into more than 1 vs 2, and with careful pulling and snares that turns into 1v1 two times), in pvp if you find yourself into 1 vs 3 then you already failed and unless the other guys are dumb, you should die.

It's pretty common to get 2 or 3 on you at once, especially with PvE's insane respawn timer. I understand they probably set it low so that you wouldn't have to wander through an empty countryside after a group washed through slaughtering everything in sight, but there are some mobs that literally respawn faster than you can clear them out, often right on top of you. Especially if you take the extra time of "careful pulling." Like I said, balance issues that need a little tweaking before release.

I'll probably be playing a caster class when it comes out though. Just to be safe. Balance never was ANet's strong suit.

 

[Korten12]

PvE aside (i went only up to lvl 15 areas, and up to there don't remember being forced into more than 1 vs 2, and with careful pulling and snares that turns into 1v1 two times), in pvp if you find yourself into 1 vs 3 then you already failed and unless the other guys are dumb, you should die.

It's pretty common to get 2 or 3 on you at once, especially with PvE's insane respawn timer. I understand they probably set it low so that you wouldn't have to wander through an empty countryside after a group washed through slaughtering everything in sight, but there are some mobs that literally respawn faster than you can clear them out, often right on top of you. Especially if you take the extra time of "careful pulling." Like I said, balance issues that need a little tweaking before release.

I'll probably be playing a caster class when it comes out though. Just to be safe. Balance never was ANet's strong suit.

Really? When it came to balance, I heard GW1 was actually one of the more balanced MMO's on the market.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Arena Net still nerfs overbalanced builds to this day despite putting most of their resources into GW2.

they have put a large amount of time into balancing GW1.

 

[SovietSecrets]

Loved the beta. Wish it wasn't on the weekend where I had work everyday, but leveling to 10 was a blast and exploring the city and outside area was pretty fun too. Loved how quests were set up and you can pick and choose what you wanted to accomplish and it all went toward completion and the random events that would pop up while questing. Can't wait to play it again now.

 

[Tanakh]

I'll probably be playing a caster class when it comes out though. Just to be safe. Balance never was ANet's strong suit.

I am counting on that! Will go FotM ganker on release

Unless FotM is guardian or necro... fuck them, don't like their playstyle at all.

 

[Fenrin]

Waiting for open beta. Not really feeling optimistic about it, considering they forgot about fans who spent a LOT of money on game (two accounts with Trilogy + EotN) and played the game since the beginning (my oldest character just finished 5 years, and my main account is almost 6,5 years old). No beta invite. Kind of disappointed, though not surprising after Eye of the North.

You have to prepruchase the game since they will send you the code (or if you bought the package the code is inside) in order to play the beta.
The beta is not over as they will have another beta weekend for every end of the month until the official release.

Well aware that I have to pre-purchase the game.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you" instead of "Buy our next game!! then you'll get a chance to see it!".

Unless there's some actual open beta, they lost me to Diablo 3.

In case you weren't aware, the Hall of Hero's from EoTN will return in the Norn area and have exclusive items at each returning GW1's player beck and call decided by all the different achievements the player had completed over the course of their playtime, including armor, mounts, powerups, etc.

As for long time players getting instant access into the beta's.. why? No company that I'm aware of ever does that, and really doesn't have any reason to do so. Hell, no one even had to subscribe to the game to play it, only their time was being consumed. And, the incentive should be playing the game that is the sequel to the one you loved playing, not being rewarded for how long you have been a fanboy. Seriously.

In Diablo 3's open beta, the beta was really, really small in terms of explorable area's and story progression in the first Act. Guild Wars 2 was much larger in these respects.

Guild Wars 2 had an open beta? Didn't realize it.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you"

Yeah, if only they gave dedicated GW 1 players, i dunno, sweet exclusive weaps, pets, armour, titles...

They also give it to anyone who bought the game just before release and managed to get those 30 points.

Or someone who bought account second-hand off ebay for few bucks to get the weapons.

Again, it's the "old-timers vs newcomers" thing. Old-time players get exactly the same things new players get. What's the incentive for the old players to play the game? Pretty sure if I got to play the beta, like I had the chance with Diablo 3, I might've considered pre-purchasing it.

Now, not so sure. Already pre-ordered D3, and if it wasn't coming out this year, I would've went for GW2 instead.

So... Essentially because they weren't treating you super special compared to the rest, your not going to preorder it?

Well, that plus constantly ignoring the loyal playerbase for some time now (power creep in PvE and ignoring PvP balancing, removing Xunlai Tournament House because they didn't want to try fixing it, releasing a PvE-only expansion that betrayed the original vision of skill > time spent playing game). I'm not that angry. It's just my explanation of why I won't blindly pay a company that has given me nothing to make me want to pre-order their game. Blizzard did give me the option of trying the game and seeing for my own how it works out.

Blizzard isn't exactly known for giving extensive betas in Diablo games. Diablo 2's demo was one class (Barbarian) up to level I think 10 (a lot less compared to D3) and only two first quests (as opposed to a couple of quests from Act 1 in D3).

So I assume you are equally outraged you did not get special attention for D3 because you played D2?

 

[targren]

Really? When it came to balance, I heard GW1 was actually one of the more balanced MMO's on the market.

Really? Someone sold you a bill of goods there. They've always been heavy-handed, when they've been compelled to do something at all. That's why Rangers have been basically useless for over 2 years. Fortunately, I finished my hall before the last uber-update.

 

[targren]

Really? When it came to balance, I heard GW1 was actually one of the more balanced MMO's on the market.

Really? Someone sold you a bill of goods there. They've always been heavy-handed, when they've been compelled to do something at all. That's why Rangers have been basically useless for over 2 years. Fortunately, I finished my hall before the last uber-update.

 

[Abedeus]

Waiting for open beta. Not really feeling optimistic about it, considering they forgot about fans who spent a LOT of money on game (two accounts with Trilogy + EotN) and played the game since the beginning (my oldest character just finished 5 years, and my main account is almost 6,5 years old). No beta invite. Kind of disappointed, though not surprising after Eye of the North.

You have to prepruchase the game since they will send you the code (or if you bought the package the code is inside) in order to play the beta.
The beta is not over as they will have another beta weekend for every end of the month until the official release.

Well aware that I have to pre-purchase the game.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you" instead of "Buy our next game!! then you'll get a chance to see it!".

Unless there's some actual open beta, they lost me to Diablo 3.

In case you weren't aware, the Hall of Hero's from EoTN will return in the Norn area and have exclusive items at each returning GW1's player beck and call decided by all the different achievements the player had completed over the course of their playtime, including armor, mounts, powerups, etc.

As for long time players getting instant access into the beta's.. why? No company that I'm aware of ever does that, and really doesn't have any reason to do so. Hell, no one even had to subscribe to the game to play it, only their time was being consumed. And, the incentive should be playing the game that is the sequel to the one you loved playing, not being rewarded for how long you have been a fanboy. Seriously.

In Diablo 3's open beta, the beta was really, really small in terms of explorable area's and story progression in the first Act. Guild Wars 2 was much larger in these respects.

Guild Wars 2 had an open beta? Didn't realize it.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you"

Yeah, if only they gave dedicated GW 1 players, i dunno, sweet exclusive weaps, pets, armour, titles...

They also give it to anyone who bought the game just before release and managed to get those 30 points.

Or someone who bought account second-hand off ebay for few bucks to get the weapons.

Again, it's the "old-timers vs newcomers" thing. Old-time players get exactly the same things new players get. What's the incentive for the old players to play the game? Pretty sure if I got to play the beta, like I had the chance with Diablo 3, I might've considered pre-purchasing it.

Now, not so sure. Already pre-ordered D3, and if it wasn't coming out this year, I would've went for GW2 instead.

So... Essentially because they weren't treating you super special compared to the rest, your not going to preorder it?

Well, that plus constantly ignoring the loyal playerbase for some time now (power creep in PvE and ignoring PvP balancing, removing Xunlai Tournament House because they didn't want to try fixing it, releasing a PvE-only expansion that betrayed the original vision of skill > time spent playing game). I'm not that angry. It's just my explanation of why I won't blindly pay a company that has given me nothing to make me want to pre-order their game. Blizzard did give me the option of trying the game and seeing for my own how it works out.

Blizzard isn't exactly known for giving extensive betas in Diablo games. Diablo 2's demo was one class (Barbarian) up to level I think 10 (a lot less compared to D3) and only two first quests (as opposed to a couple of quests from Act 1 in D3).

So I assume you are equally outraged you did not get special attention for D3 because you played D2?

Actually, Blizzard had very little means of checking who bought the game early, who is a long-term fan and who played a lot of D2. Game was released and times when Internet wasn't very popular world-wide, and until recently you had to keep your CDs with you instead of just registering the game on-line to download it later.

Guild Wars has accurate to the minute system checking how old accounts are, how old characters are, how many hours you played each and every one of them and how many hours total. They can tell if someone has been in the game for 7 years, 6 years and who has just joined. Blizzard had no such system.


Also, I did get a beta key for D3 from Escapist. And I've seen a LOT more occasions to get a key from other sites for D3. Not so much for Guild Wars 2. Hell, I got a beta key for Tribes without pre-ordering anything.

 

[Korten12]

Waiting for open beta. Not really feeling optimistic about it, considering they forgot about fans who spent a LOT of money on game (two accounts with Trilogy + EotN) and played the game since the beginning (my oldest character just finished 5 years, and my main account is almost 6,5 years old). No beta invite. Kind of disappointed, though not surprising after Eye of the North.

You have to prepruchase the game since they will send you the code (or if you bought the package the code is inside) in order to play the beta.
The beta is not over as they will have another beta weekend for every end of the month until the official release.

Well aware that I have to pre-purchase the game.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you" instead of "Buy our next game!! then you'll get a chance to see it!".

Unless there's some actual open beta, they lost me to Diablo 3.

In case you weren't aware, the Hall of Hero's from EoTN will return in the Norn area and have exclusive items at each returning GW1's player beck and call decided by all the different achievements the player had completed over the course of their playtime, including armor, mounts, powerups, etc.

As for long time players getting instant access into the beta's.. why? No company that I'm aware of ever does that, and really doesn't have any reason to do so. Hell, no one even had to subscribe to the game to play it, only their time was being consumed. And, the incentive should be playing the game that is the sequel to the one you loved playing, not being rewarded for how long you have been a fanboy. Seriously.

In Diablo 3's open beta, the beta was really, really small in terms of explorable area's and story progression in the first Act. Guild Wars 2 was much larger in these respects.

Guild Wars 2 had an open beta? Didn't realize it.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you"

Yeah, if only they gave dedicated GW 1 players, i dunno, sweet exclusive weaps, pets, armour, titles...

They also give it to anyone who bought the game just before release and managed to get those 30 points.

Or someone who bought account second-hand off ebay for few bucks to get the weapons.

Again, it's the "old-timers vs newcomers" thing. Old-time players get exactly the same things new players get. What's the incentive for the old players to play the game? Pretty sure if I got to play the beta, like I had the chance with Diablo 3, I might've considered pre-purchasing it.

Now, not so sure. Already pre-ordered D3, and if it wasn't coming out this year, I would've went for GW2 instead.

So... Essentially because they weren't treating you super special compared to the rest, your not going to preorder it?

Well, that plus constantly ignoring the loyal playerbase for some time now (power creep in PvE and ignoring PvP balancing, removing Xunlai Tournament House because they didn't want to try fixing it, releasing a PvE-only expansion that betrayed the original vision of skill > time spent playing game). I'm not that angry. It's just my explanation of why I won't blindly pay a company that has given me nothing to make me want to pre-order their game. Blizzard did give me the option of trying the game and seeing for my own how it works out.

Blizzard isn't exactly known for giving extensive betas in Diablo games. Diablo 2's demo was one class (Barbarian) up to level I think 10 (a lot less compared to D3) and only two first quests (as opposed to a couple of quests from Act 1 in D3).

So I assume you are equally outraged you did not get special attention for D3 because you played D2?

Actually, Blizzard had very little means of checking who bought the game early, who is a long-term fan and who played a lot of D2. Game was released and times when Internet wasn't very popular world-wide, and until recently you had to keep your CDs with you instead of just registering the game on-line to download it later.

Guild Wars has accurate to the minute system checking how old accounts are, how old characters are, how many hours you played each and every one of them and how many hours total. They can tell if someone has been in the game for 7 years, 6 years and who has just joined. Blizzard had no such system.


Also, I did get a beta key for D3 from Escapist. And I've seen a LOT more occasions to get a key from other sites for D3. Not so much for Guild Wars 2. Hell, I got a beta key for Tribes without pre-ordering anything.

I am sorry but are you really that but hurt over this situation? You can watch videos, if you believe playing the first game should get you into the beta then though luck. Rarely any companies ever do that. This isn't beta tests like Diablo 3 (Which only had that one beta event which many couldn't even get to play because of how crowded it was) or Tribes which went OB really quickly.

This is a weekend Beta Tests over a random amount of time. There could be one next week, this week, and the next. They don't know. Most games, like TERA for example, if you didn't preorder then you had to get a new key every week.

The GW2 beta was already cramped as is. If they just let everyone get in then the servers would have crashed which many times it was damn close to.

 

[Abedeus]

Waiting for open beta. Not really feeling optimistic about it, considering they forgot about fans who spent a LOT of money on game (two accounts with Trilogy + EotN) and played the game since the beginning (my oldest character just finished 5 years, and my main account is almost 6,5 years old). No beta invite. Kind of disappointed, though not surprising after Eye of the North.

You have to prepruchase the game since they will send you the code (or if you bought the package the code is inside) in order to play the beta.
The beta is not over as they will have another beta weekend for every end of the month until the official release.

Well aware that I have to pre-purchase the game.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you" instead of "Buy our next game!! then you'll get a chance to see it!".

Unless there's some actual open beta, they lost me to Diablo 3.

In case you weren't aware, the Hall of Hero's from EoTN will return in the Norn area and have exclusive items at each returning GW1's player beck and call decided by all the different achievements the player had completed over the course of their playtime, including armor, mounts, powerups, etc.

As for long time players getting instant access into the beta's.. why? No company that I'm aware of ever does that, and really doesn't have any reason to do so. Hell, no one even had to subscribe to the game to play it, only their time was being consumed. And, the incentive should be playing the game that is the sequel to the one you loved playing, not being rewarded for how long you have been a fanboy. Seriously.

In Diablo 3's open beta, the beta was really, really small in terms of explorable area's and story progression in the first Act. Guild Wars 2 was much larger in these respects.

Guild Wars 2 had an open beta? Didn't realize it.

My point was that they could've at least given some chance for old-time fans who supported them for years at least some "thank you"

Yeah, if only they gave dedicated GW 1 players, i dunno, sweet exclusive weaps, pets, armour, titles...

They also give it to anyone who bought the game just before release and managed to get those 30 points.

Or someone who bought account second-hand off ebay for few bucks to get the weapons.

Again, it's the "old-timers vs newcomers" thing. Old-time players get exactly the same things new players get. What's the incentive for the old players to play the game? Pretty sure if I got to play the beta, like I had the chance with Diablo 3, I might've considered pre-purchasing it.

Now, not so sure. Already pre-ordered D3, and if it wasn't coming out this year, I would've went for GW2 instead.

So... Essentially because they weren't treating you super special compared to the rest, your not going to preorder it?

Well, that plus constantly ignoring the loyal playerbase for some time now (power creep in PvE and ignoring PvP balancing, removing Xunlai Tournament House because they didn't want to try fixing it, releasing a PvE-only expansion that betrayed the original vision of skill > time spent playing game). I'm not that angry. It's just my explanation of why I won't blindly pay a company that has given me nothing to make me want to pre-order their game. Blizzard did give me the option of trying the game and seeing for my own how it works out.

Blizzard isn't exactly known for giving extensive betas in Diablo games. Diablo 2's demo was one class (Barbarian) up to level I think 10 (a lot less compared to D3) and only two first quests (as opposed to a couple of quests from Act 1 in D3).

So I assume you are equally outraged you did not get special attention for D3 because you played D2?

Actually, Blizzard had very little means of checking who bought the game early, who is a long-term fan and who played a lot of D2. Game was released and times when Internet wasn't very popular world-wide, and until recently you had to keep your CDs with you instead of just registering the game on-line to download it later.

Guild Wars has accurate to the minute system checking how old accounts are, how old characters are, how many hours you played each and every one of them and how many hours total. They can tell if someone has been in the game for 7 years, 6 years and who has just joined. Blizzard had no such system.


Also, I did get a beta key for D3 from Escapist. And I've seen a LOT more occasions to get a key from other sites for D3. Not so much for Guild Wars 2. Hell, I got a beta key for Tribes without pre-ordering anything.

I am sorry but are you really that but hurt over this situation? You can watch videos, if you believe playing the first game should get you into the beta then though luck. Rarely any companies ever do that. This isn't beta tests like Diablo 3 (Which only had that one beta event which many couldn't even get to play because of how crowded it was) or Tribes which went OB really quickly.

This is a weekend Beta Tests over a random amount of time. There could be one next week, this week, and the next. They don't know. Most games, like TERA for example, if you didn't preorder then you had to get a new key every week.

The GW2 beta was already cramped as is. If they just let everyone get in then the servers would have crashed which many times it was damn close to.

I thought I made it quite clear that I didn't pre-order because I didn't play the game. I played Diablo 3 and I pre-ordered it. GW2 lost a sale, at least a full-priced one, because they didn't care enough. You people seem to care a lot more about this thing, don't know why.

If their servers can't handle what Diablo 3 handled during OB, then they will have major problems after release.