Guild Wars 2 is shaping up to be pretty awesome, in my opinion. I'm looking forward to another beta weekend event. ArenaNet has made some nice changes to the standard MMORPG gameplay. Movement, aim, and position are more important than in games like World of Warcraft, though there are still targeted skills. Questing is not a static thing with their event system. You can enter an area and get involved immediately without needing to party with other players, you just contribute to the event and get rewarded based on your contribution. You can raise your reputation with NPCs in each zone and unlock rewards that way. The events are cyclical and branching. If you and the other people fighting fail to fend off the dragon attack or whatever, the town burns and another chain of events will be set in motion. Eventually it will get back to the original state, but it's a bit more compelling than collecting bear asses for people with punctuation floating over their heads. They've also made it their goal to break the holy trinity of tank, damage, healer. Each character has a basic set of five skills based on their equipped weapons (each class has a different skill set for available weapons) on the left side of the action bar. Dual wield means 1-3 are main hand, 4 and 5 are off hand. You can mix and match for different play styles. This means Warriors in particular get a boat load of options to choose from and they're all pretty cool. Slot 6 is your healing ability. It can be a self heal or one that affects your allies or similar. The Engineer class has an ability in slot 6 that switches your 1-5 abilities bandages and potions you can use on your self and allies. Engineer also has turrets and a flamethrower. It's pretty bad ass. Slots 7-9 are pulled from your list of class abilities that you unlock with skill points which you can gain by leveling up or completing challenges that are marked on the map in each zone. You have an extensive list to choose from but early on you only have slot 7 which you don't even unlock until level 5 I think. This is a lot like the first Guild Wars where you had to choose your whole action bar (10 skills I think?) before going into an action area. Skill 0 is elite skill or something like that, I am not sure what those are like or how and when to get them. Aside from all that, the game is ridiculously beautiful graphically and artistically.
This is from the opening cutscene, with one of the characters I made:
[SCREENSHOT]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134216619913/80E236BAC3B13FD7BA29CADF5738EB4AAD397F9B/[/SCREENSHOT]
This is an in-game shot. The background behind the guy there is a big dam. You can walk to it and climb up it and fight things on it. Really screenshots don't really do this game justice because it looks flat, but when you move toward that the details come in pretty smoothly and it's really nice to see.
[SCREENSHOT]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134216618091/E26348063D5B20F0BECE83FCAA979E9F1795DA0E/[/SCREENSHOT]
Just for laughs.
[SCREENSHOT]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541800134216621327/3E237BD9F8327F81193AF0A0DEF51FB53BFFAD04/[/SCREENSHOT]
I should have taken video. I was pretty sure I'd taken more screenshots using the Steam overlay but I can't find where it would save those screenshots since it saves them by game ID under Steam\userdata. Oh well.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to this one. They haven't given a release date as of yet but pre-orders are open so I don't think it will be later than fourth quarter this year. That's a lot more words than I mean to write.