Guild Wars, free beta now (well not NOW now, but then now)

[A Black Falcon]

right-click screenshot, Edit, File, Save As, open Halloween folder, change to 'save as JPG (they save as bitmaps), upload to the image thread, link in this thread... what a pain with a bunch of pictures...

But... the game is just so beautiful... I have to post some of these... :)

(I had 73 screenshots from the first test; this time I got 91.)


Appropriate place to start... the loading screen. :) ... okay, it's because I forgot to take any screenshots of the main menu...


Here's what it looks like right now anyway... you can't launch the game, but you can listen to the awesome menu screen music.


The character's default costumes have changed from the first test. Here are a few. Male Warrior -- now in leather, not full plate.


Female Elementalist. Now wearing even less!


Female Necromancer still look cool.


Male ones still look weird. On the whole the female characters are definitely better looking, however you define the phrase...


Male Mesmers look okay though.


Female Mesmers look Victorian, IMO...


What are the classes? Warriors are front-line fighters. Rangers have archery skills and can capture a animal pet to help them. Monks heal and resurrect. Necromancers curse and can raise the dead. Elementalists use nice fun damaging elemental skills, as well as some other enchantments. And Mesmers (haven't played as one) do status effect stuff (advanced class)...

Anyway... the game is still the same. Still great fun. What is the genre? Hmm... somewhat unique. It's like a cross of a standard MMORPG, Diablo, Dungeon Siege, and Magic cards... only substantially different from any of them. :) At its heart though it's an action-oriented online RPG. What it is NOT is a standard MMORPG. It intentionally doesn't follow a lot of the genre conventions and annoys some fans of that genre because of that. It doesn't have a massive level treadmill. You level up fast and max out at the quite attainable level 20. Items? Sure there are items, but they are more about being different than better -- yes, there is better stuff and worse, but once you hit 20 it's just more about "different' than better -- an item with good bonuses but drawbacks to balance it.

Erm... gameplay... I talked about that in May! You get skills. How you get them has changed -- now you buy them either from a guy in the main town or people selling them in other towns you have to find in your adventures (though there are also two other ways to get them now, which aren't as important really and I won't explain now). Anyway, you get skills. Then in a town or gameroom (before mission start), you choose eight you want equipped. You'll quickly get a lot more than eight so choosing just the eight you want to use requires a lot of thought... there is no surfeit of skills either -- hundreds, between the six classes. 150 each maybe? Or was it 75... yeah, that sounds right. Either way, a lot. Which means a lot of variety, and tough choices... especially since you have two classes. One is the primary class and the other is secondary. Which is which is very important -- a Warrior/Elementalist will have more health and less skill points than a Elementalist/Warrior, and the difference means a lot. Also you get some abilities that you can only use if the class is your primary class. So despite the "short" list of six classes, there is plenty of depth there as well.

How does it play? You can control your character with either the arrow keys, WASD, or the mouse (by clicking on the ground to go to places). Targetting is best done by clicking on enemies (or friends, for buffs), but you can also use a key to switch between everyone one screen one at a time (often takes longer...). Then you either do a normal attack or click a skill button (or hotkey) to use that skill on that character. It ends up as fast-paced but strategic gameplay... in the PvP arenas it can feel almost like a FPS, but with a RPG game system. Great fun.

The overworld map. PvP is red, city gold, and campaign missions white. You click on a region to zoom in.


The game is divided into four major sections. The non-combat areas (the town and enterance zones for each mission or gametype), the adventure zones (mostly for single player, but you can take parties), the PvP arenas, and the campaign missions.

The first game type you will run across is the open town zones. These are not instanced, but are divided into many parts -- it's not everyone in the same world or a game broken into hard servers, but a design where it limits the number of people per zone and breaks each map into an appropriate number of zones which you can freely switch between if you wish. Here you can visit the NPC salespeople in the town or chat with others (in town), gather together a party to take on a mission, or enter the random team arena. In town appears one of the game's few really annoying aspects -- chat spam. The more populated zones are FULL of it... you have to spend time constantly blocking spammers trying to buy or sell items. They need to implement some better player selling system and limit chat spam, and badly... but this really is minor as you can always go to relatively unpopulated zones if you wish. As for getting parties, I've never found it to take all too long.

Crafting. In this build, crafting is the only way to get new armor. Weapons you have to get from drops, but armor only comes from bringing the needed materials to the crafter and crafting something. This is quite time consuming, as gathering all the materials is a chore. You have to use the single-player adventure mode, hope for luck, and use the purchasable Salvage Packs on all weapon and armor items you collect that you don't need to use. This reduces your income (not selling as much back to the stores) and uses up salvage packs you have to re-purchase after 25 uses, but is absolutely necessary... so it takes quite a while to get together the items to craft something. It's impressive that some people managed full suits (headgear, hands, torso, legs, and feet)... I only crafted one item, and that was with like three hours left. This would work a lot better in a full game and not a four day test... That brings up another issue -- you can't see what the item actually looks like before crafting it! You just get those little barely-representative pictures... really annoying!

Ships in the town harbor.


A mostly deserted district at the town fountain.


Crowded town district (look at the chat box!), with the dye mercant screen and my inventory up.


The Crafter. Crafting (armor) is a very important aspect of the game... but time consuming. Also, my character stats page.


Zone where you gather together a party before a campaign mission.



The campaign is made up of, in this test, six missions. Each one is pretty long and quite challenging, though, so you probably won't just blast through them... just like the E3 test. :)

The main difference is that now missions are for six players instead of four like that test. And they are different missions, of course, fitting the new setting... On that note, the game has a different location from test one! That was all in a 'badlands' area (that I think is the top right corner area of the big map here). This time you are mostly in a jungle area, though also you spend some time in the barren highlands above the jungle. Honestly, the new setting just isn't quite as interesting as the old one... it's okay, but I liked the broken wasteland (full of destroyed buildings and stuff) more.

I love this mode. The game design forces the players to work as a TEAM. You have to work together to get anywhere. The linear (that is, cooridors, not big open areas; at times levels can be annoyingly mazelike and confusing when they don't tell you clearly where to go next... though the game is good enough that it's still fun...) design encourages this, but so does the way that the classes rely on eachother -- warriors go in front, others behind, for the most part. Four of the six classes have a very hard time going on their own (the three mages and rangers)... and you need clerics around to heal and resurrect. So you have to work together. This is a definite strength of the game. Sure, the enemies don't have the best AI of all time, but it's decent enough to make the game fun, and that's what counts...

In a campaign mission.


Another one.


Great shot... this game is really good looking.


Mission where we had to bring along this stone thing that connected to us with lightning bolt things...


The second action mode is the adventure zones. These are zones you access from going out portals from the town or from the missions. They are large zones you explore. You can traverse the continent this way, though the main reason for doing so is getting experience and items. The instant warp map screen precludes any need to travel point to point in this overworld...

As for level design here, like the missions you are generally in some kind of canyon or something where you have a obvious direction to go. However, it branches frequently and has plenty of larger open areas so it is definitely not all linear. Sure, some of the branches are dead ends, but they aren't all... It's a series of interlocking zones. They are quite dangerous, too. With my ranger main character it was impossible to solo here, so I had to make use of the NPC henchmen -- free computer controlled allies you can add to your party, Warrior, Monk, Elementalist, or Ranger. I found that I needed a Warrior -- to keep enemies away from the vulnerable Ranger -- and a Monk to heal. It reduces XP (I believe) and gold, but other than that works great, and is necessary unless you are exploring this area with a party... which is not something I tried. Given its somewhat nonlinear nature and not really specifically goal driven design (though there are sidequests you can take in the town or in the adventure zones that bring you into it for a specific mission, that is not most of why you would be there), I don't know how well a random party would do here... with friends though, sure, it could be good. Though one main reason to use it is so that you get ALL the drops, instead of having to share the loot with other players (see, the game randomly assigns each item to a player so the back-row characters get their fair share. So you have to solo (or have just henchmen) to get all the items, which can be important if you want to craft things...) Anyway, some shots.

On the coast.


A beautiful lake.


On the lake.


Ooh...


The final major mode is PvP. As last time, there are two game types -- random arena (4v4 for the first few days, then boosted to 8v8) and chosen team tourney arena. The random arena is great. It's a larger and not quite as nice map as the first random arena map, and the move to 8v8 was bad (4v4 allows for better teamwork and is just more fun), but it's still a very fun game mode. The principal problem is that you get no benifits other than XP -- no items or anything and no stats of wins or losses. You just keep fighting until you lose -- if your team wins it moves on intact, but once you lose you all get sent back to the start zone to join another randomly chosen team.

You do get benifits from the chosen-team tourney arena (sorry, no shots of it). In this, you start by making a team of eight players. Then you enter and fight monsters in a 'hold off the enemy' scenario for several minuites until the other participating teams are lined up and ready. Then, the mission starts. It is a random choice between several game types, including straight 1v1 team battles to the death, giant 4-team, 32-player melees with a resurrection station that will return your party to life if it all dies and the NPC priest is alive (and a NPC warrior ally), and another game mode I never ran in to (capture the flag variant or something?). If you lose, you go back to the start zone. If you win however you get another fight -- against another winning team and in a new arena. The team I played this mode with didn't win the one time we got there so I don't know whan happens next. In this mode you do get more rewards -- Fame. A win in the first round (not counting the PvE 'hold them off' part) gets you 1 Fame point and a win in the second (victor's championship) two. A record of your success in the mode... I got 4 points. :D Yeah, I didn't play it too much... fun, but I wanted to focus more on stuff that got me rewards I could use for crafting with limited time.

Random Team Arena, 8v8 (last day). Note that there are three rangers (including me) on this team with pets... Oh, and that is indeed an Elementalist in front of my ranger. She's got a full set of Pyromancer robes...


Another one, with a different Elementalist with a full crafted set of armor.


Picture of my pet bird, in the PvP arena.


Whew, done... with the screenshots anyway... want anything more explanation-wise?