Guild Wars 2 leads to creative hiatus
It’s been a while since I picked up the pencil and I’m giving Guild Wars 2 all the credit. It’s a captivating game.
Guild Wars 2 Login Screen
I’ve played for 35 hours over the last 22 days across 5 races each in a different profession with just over half that time spent as a Human Elementalist that is also an Artificer and Tailor.
Human Elementalist at the Player Select Screen – Guild Wars 2
PCGamer first tempted me to try the game and I splashed out £64 for the privilege of getting the game early only to have trouble accessing the servers at all during the early access period. Over the course of a few days after the full launch, ArenaNet sorted out the initial access issues and the game runs pretty smoothly at a high resolution on my computer now.
I’d also gone into Guild Wars 2 with the intention of joining the PCGamer guild PCGGW but it was full before I could put my name down. Luckily I didn’t have to stay out in the cold for long because some player I bumped into not only saved my life after a fateful encounter with ferocious eagles but invited me to join the Black Ravens [RAVN] guild.
The Black Ravens don’t seem that active or organized and that’s a good thing since I’m less likely to get kicked 🙂 It’s also rather handy that they are primarily PvE (Player vs Environment) since I’m not bothered about the PvP and WvWvW (World v World v World) content.
Anyhow, what do I like about the game? Primarily the variety of things to do and see.
Here are just a few screen shots of places I’ve visited recently.
Human Elementalist at Godslost Swamp
Vista of Hoelbrak Bridge
Norn Thief also at Hoelbrak
Sylvari Engineer in The Grove
Basically, the game has a huge environment. Your character can spend hours wandering ’round an area this big:
Map showing Nornstarting area and main city.
and the world is this big:
Map zoomed out as much as possible with Norn starting area (above) highlighted.
There is maybe 25% of the full map beyond the bottom of this image!
I like the collaborative feel of events in populated areas. Other players often come to help out and combat is fun against standard enemies. On the other hand, if you’re wandering around on your own and happen across an aggressive boss or “veteran”, it’s easy to get yourself into a pickle. Thankfully death isn’t permanenant and the penalty to revive yourself + repair armor is quite low.
As with other topics, the forums have to be read judisciously as they can be filled with complaints that easily taint your view of an otherwise great product. For instance, I’ve heard that at higher levels there is less to do (i.e. less “dynamic events”), that travel costs are exhoribtantly high and that playing on your own means you can’t get to some of the best rewards in the endgame. It will probably take me months to hit these issues so I’m not worried right now.
If I get 2-3 months use out of this game I’ll be happy, so long as I don’t pour too much more real money into it.
If you don’t already own Guild Wars 2 and you’re into MMOs or RPGs, it’s worth a look.
Oba's SandBox 
Reblogged this on Gigable – Tech Blog.