My Guild Wars (GW) World Preview Event Experience - By Soul Edge

Disclaimer: everything is just my personal take and based on what I gathered in the four days of play time, while I try my best not to misinform, I am basically a clueless newbie playing the game for the first time. Also, English is my third language so forgive my grammar, spelling, typos, et cetera.

Thursday evening, just had a major meeting with my research project sponsors, had been slaving away preparing for the meeting for a few weeks now, so I was pleasently surprised to find that GW World Preview Event has begun a day earlier. While I was sleep-deprived, I was even more game-deprived, so this couldn't have been a better timing. Yay!

Created my account and was brought to the character creation screen. Hmm... well, melee is my least favorite so Warrior was out, magic and spell are my favorite, so my choices were Elementalist, Mesmer, Necromancer and Monk. From past MMORPG experience, I know healers are in great demand so I created a Monk/Mesmer, named Soul Edge The First (for the person who took the name Soul Edge, I hate you! ).

I was taken to the tutorial, with those pop up messages that informed me what to do. Before I made a move, I checked the menus, looked at the skills descriptions, and toyed with the user interface. I was worried my graphic card won't cut it, since I have a GeForce2 and the minimum stated was GeForce3, but everything seemed alright. I used the auto-detect in the advance graphic option menu and was glad it didn't set everything to the lowest quality. I also remapped the "log off" key to "End" (default is F10), and assigned F5 to F12 for selecting party members, I like to have a quick way to select party members since past experience has teached me healing and buffing are very involving matters. I suppose the maximum party size will be 8 since there were only 8 keys.

After I am reasonably comfortable with the menus and had a rough idea about the initial skills I was given, I went on to meet the person who had something to say, he had an exclaimation mark above his head. He gave me a weapon and sent me to find another person, I was more than eager to start my adventure.

The enemies in the tutorial were easy, so even given mostly healing and defensive skills, I had no problem with the tutorial. I am a curious person and I like to explore, so I found Oink and the piggy tagged along when I moved. I was expecting it to do something but it was quiet content just to follow me around and yelp "oink" once in a while, so I thought it was just a cute pet (I found out what to do with Oink when I created my second character). Soon I found the other person with exclaimation mark on his head and was given passage into Lion's Arch.

From the tutorial and looking at the keyboard setup, I found out the available shortkeys, that "space bar" will engage and use default attack on selected enemy, and the use of the world map ("M"). The mini map at the lower right hand corner, while handy with the red dot showing enemy location, was not sufficient for the directionally-challenged yours truely, since I was not used to 3D view and the camera changing angle of view, I was pretty disoriented and had to use the world map frequently. Marking the passage one has gone through with red dots is really a nice feature, I also found out we can zoom in and out of the world map by left clicking, and drag it around while zoomed in using the right mouse button.

So, I concluded the tutorial and noticed there were two "shields" but only the left one lighted up, I tugged this observation away so I could find out about what it meant (which I did later). Game loaded and I was in Lion's Arch, for a while I was rather overwhelmed by the amount of chatting going on and the amount of people moving around. There were many questions and few answers, after reading the chat for a while I gathered almost everyone was new and that I won't get much help by asking the players (blind leading the blind). I was trying to shut off the chat messages but I could not find that option in the chat menu, perhaps ArenaNet can implement a filter system of some sort? Two things I learned from the chat were the use of "ctrl" and "alt" keys, the former to show players' names and the later to show the NPCs' and signs.

That's all I needed to get started, using the "alt" key and left click on the name that showed up (which results in auto-running towards the selected NPC/sign) I explored Lion's Arch and found out what NPCs were available, where they were and what they do. I talked to all the NPCs and found out where to obtain more skills, where to craft armour, where to get material, dye, et cetera. Firstwatch Sergio (or maybe it was someone else) asked me to report to someone, which led to the first mission staging area, I was not used to the controls and wanted to rub off some newbie-ism before I do coop mission, I don't like to be a burden or to let the team down, so I headed back to Lion's Arch and went out the other exit to the Northern Kryta Province, an explorable area.

So off I went hunting and exploring, using "C" to select the nearest enemy and space bar to engage and do combat, I soon found out that monk/mesmer was given too little offensive skill to start with, and I was not really enjoying attacking with my default attack. I headed back to Lion's Arch and got myself a warrior henchman, I thought I would have to pay for the service but it was free of charge. So out I went again to explore with the warrior henchman, healing him when necessary but mainly to get myself familiar with the controls and get used to the camera. I consulted the world map a lot, and I noticed that the pointer changed when I hover over the Lion's Arch town icon, so I clicked it and found myself back in Lion's Arch, however, I was not able to go back to where I left using this method. Ops. Well, better to find out about this now rather then to find out while in coop mission and be accused of a quiter.

I ended up using this instant teleporting quite a lot, I would normally play solo (with henchmen) since I am in a different time zone with most of my gaming buddies, and also because Battle.net experience had left a bad taste about playing with random gamers. When my gaming buddies were online and ready for coop mission, I finished the battle I was in, and used the map to instantly teleport to the mission staging area to meet up with them, I find that really handy. I have never tried to teleport to town in the middle of a battle, so I am not sure whether that will work, if it does, it will be an easy escape, but one does lost all the progress and has to start from the beginning. I hope it doesn't work in battle though, I don't like the idea of an easy escape, if the battle was really that bad, the worst that could happen is a whole party wipe, which would mean losing the progress, just like teleporting to town. So might as well die fighting, might even pull through!

Anyway, I found myself back in Lion's Arch and learned about this instant teleporting usage of the world map. I took a break for dinner.

After dinner I created a new character, an elementalist/necromancer named Soul Edge Da Second (Soul Edge The Second was too long and yes, I am very creative, not). Back in familiar ground playing as an offensive spell caster, and being more used to the controls and the camera, I started to really enjoy the game. Although an option to fix the camera position will be very nice.

I went through the tutorial, got Oink to follow me, party with the warrior henchman found on the way, and reached the settlement before entering Lion's Arch. Instead of talking to the man with exclaimation mark straight ahead, I explored the settlement and came across a father and son pair, who were farmers and the son claimed Oink back, after that the warrior henchman was promoted to level 15 (he was level 5) and I received the right "shield", which I realised is for bonus quest within a mission. I then talked to the guy with exclaimation mark, got the left "shield" and ended the tutorial.

Upon arriving Lion's Arch, I found that the warrior henchman was still in my party. I didn't find out whether this warrior henchman was any different from the one we could party up before entering a mission or explorable area though, because after I spent all my money buying myself some extra skills, I logged off to take a shower. When I logged on again, the henchman was no longer with me.

Enlisting the help of a new warrior henchman, I went to explore Northern Kryta Province again, I had been using the mouse to maneuver till that point, I started to use the WASD keys and found that I like that more, I can strafe easier using the Q and E keys, select target with C and engage with space bar, all nicely grouped together. I also found out that we can autorun by pressing W twice.

I started to formulate a skill sequence for battle, I would stop at a long distance from the enemy, basically stop when I saw red dot(s) on the mini map and use "C" to select it, then I would start the battle with Life Siphon, the one necromancer skill in my collection that I always had in my skill bar, it causes negative life regeneration for the enemy while I gain a positive life regeneration for a few seconds, that's my "healing" and anti-negative life regeneration skill. Using "C" and then shortkey for Life Siphon, my character would run to casting distance and cast the spell. Melee enemy would then start approaching me and the warrior henchman would engage it, I would hit it with Shard Storm, a water skill that deals damage and slows the enemy down, to make sure it didn't come too close to me before the henchman engaged it, I don't like to be in melee range. Range enemy would start firing back, I would either strafe to avoid incoming fire or just start casting offensive spells at it while the henchman charged, since I had a positive life regeneration going on. After the enemy was engaged by the henchman and stayed in place, I would cast Fire Storm to rain fire down on it causing damage over time. Then I would bombard with Flare, a low mana cost instant recharge skill, renew the Life Siphon and throw in Shard Storm when the skill recharged. Often I would not need to cast Fire Storm again before the enemy was killed.

If there were more than one enemy and they engaged the henchman, I would cast Fire Storm and Ice Spikes, both are area effect spells and deal damage over time. If any of the enemies engage me while other engaged the warrior henchman, I would run to the henchman and cast Ward Against Melee, make sure I have the Life Siphon going, cast area effect spells, and then focus on the one the henchman was fighting and concentrate on killing one enemy after another.

The Fire Imps and their Immolate skill was fun, Immolate would set me on fire and caused negative life regen, sometimes it overcame the Life Siphon positive regen so I had to renew Life Siphon as soon as it recharged. When they came in group it could be deadly without direct healing skill, but after I started to solo with warrior and monk henchmen it was alright. In fact, enemies that cast negative life regen skill were my main problem, I could usually counter with Life Siphon but sometimes the negative regen magnitude was way greater than the positive I could get from Life Siphon, that's the uh oh situation for me. If I had direct healing skill(s) it would be a lesser issue, luckily I didn't come across many enemies with such skills, the Fire Imp type with their Immolate, necromancer type with Life Siphon, and deadliest of all I found were the Wind Riders, I didn't catch the name of the skill they use, it turn the life bar pink and has large negative regen magnitude (a lot of < signs!).

While exploring Northern Kryta Province, I found a group of bandits and after killing them, I recieved a pop up message informing me to talk to Firstwatch Sergio. Ah, so we do get mission in explorable area, nice. I carried on exploring the area and found a settlement, but no NPC wanted to talk (I found out about Captain Greywind later) so I carried on until I reached a seaside, a group of enemies killed both the warrior henchman and I there, meh. Well, teached me to be more aware of the social AI of the enemies, they will help their friends within certain distance. Back in Lion's Arch I talked to Firstwatch Sergio and got 100 exp for killing the bandits.

From then onwards, I solo with warrior as well as the monk henchmen. I went out exploring again and found another group of bandits with a named boss, and after killing him, I was informed that I had killed an escaped murderer and I should talk to Firstwatch Sergio for my reward, again! I later found out that if I had returned to the spot where I killed the first group of bandits, an NPC would have given me this mission. But I did it anyway without first getting the mission and the reward was another 100 exp. I returned to Lion's Arch and bought myself a basic salvage kit and used it on the unwanted items I found from loots, since selling them to merchant would net me 2 gold per piece each, might as well salvage the items to get raw material for crafting. Item crafting was not a priority to me, I used what I found, I spent almost all the gold on getting skills. I finally did some crafting on the last day of the world preview event though, just to try it out.

I would have played more if I had not been so sleep deprived, I was too exhausted to continue so I called it a night.

My Guild Wars World Preview Event Experience. Day 2
Day two, the official starting date for the World Preview Event. I logged on as Soul Edge Da Second and made a party with a friend who played a Necromancer/Elementalist (exact opposite of my character!) to do the first coop mission, we took the warrior and monk henchmen with us. The game went faster than when I was playing solo, mainly because I was not the one leading, a really good choice honestly, for I am rather slow at navigation. We went through the mission at a comfortable pace, the level of challenge was about right, not too tough but still required close attention. I soon got used to the partner's combat style, he would charge into melee range for he has a lot of skills that required touching, I would bombard with spells to assist. We completed the first mission but missed the bonus quest, I was a bit worried when I was viewing the animation after mission completion, because I did not see my character knighted, it only showed the leader (my friend) being knighted. For a second there I thought we would have to redo the mission to get my character knighted, that would have been really silly, luckily it was just me being silly. We both got the credit and we went on to try the second mission.

Again, the level of challenge was still about right. I was confident that I could do the mission solo with the warrior and monk henchmen, just slower, but definately doable. But I prefer to do it in a party anyway, not only it was more interesting and faster paced, I didn't have to navigate! All went well, we got the spooky eye and sent those chosen ones into the hands of the Shining Blades, meh. Again we didn't get the bonus quest, and my curiosity was starting to bubble up, I just had to find out what the bonus quests were!

But before we could carry on, there was a message saying the GW server needed to do an emergency maintenance, and we had to log out in fifteen minutes time, and log back on after a while. So we headed to town to do some shopping and selling and logged out. I am not sure how long it took for the server to be up again, I tried a few times but after I logged on, much slower than normal, my character would only be able to move a few steps before being rooted to a spot. It was the prime time for the poeple in the States to start playing, probably the sudden influx of players has flooded the server? Anyway, I took a break and checked the GW site, there was a gameplay guide for the WPE (http://www.guildwars.com/preview/guide/default.html), I learned some new slash commands and emotes, as well as ways of acquiring skills. I logged back on after an hour or so, everything was working again, though there seemed to be a slight lag now, but it could just be my imagination.

My friend has gone offline, so I was back to solo game. I heard from the chat that there was a skill trainer in Northern Kryta Province, named Captain Greywind, situated in a settlement. Hmm... I remember finding a settlement, but all the NPCs I met had nothing to say, but how could I pass up a chance to learn more skill? So I headed out with warrior and monk henchmen and worked my way to the settlement (consulting the world map a lot). Sure enough, Captain Greywind was there, and I picked up a few skills, and bought two Signet of Capture, I then explored the area as thorough as I could, found a "mist wall" to another area on the north east but when I ran through it, I was sent back to Northern Kryta Province, perhaps the area was not available at that time? I also found the way to Farmer's Market, a small town that added another icon on the world map. There was a crafter in Farmer's Market that can craft level 19+ items. Since I was not keen on crafting at that time, I readied my new skills and headed to the staging area of second mission, Divinity Coast.

Initially I wanted to do it solo so I could explore thoroughly and find out about the bonus quest, but I was invited to a party as soon as I arrived so I just joined. Typically the leader just wanted to rush through everything, party members scattered all over the map, most of them just trying to catch up with the leader. I selected the leader in the party member list and use space bar to aut-follow him, I had to ask him to stop every so often to let the others catch up, sometime he listened, sometime he did not. I did informed all to select him in the party list and use space bar to auto-follow, so towards the end it was not so bad. The thing with auto-follow is that once the leader stopped and you stopped, you would have to press space bar again to auto-follow when the leader starts to run again.

However, I learned a very handy thing in that game, there were constant messages from the party leader informing us which monster he was targeting and we that could use "T" to target the same monster. Of course I could have just asked how he did it, but on a hunch I press the "ctrl" key, it showed the names of all the monsters within mini-map range and when I click on one of the names, I got that message and party member could use "T" to target what I have selected! Woohoo! Instantly I fell in love with that, I called it "calling a target/call target", it was so handy to focus fire and kill the enemy one at a time instead of spreading out the damage to various ones. It became my preferred choice of engaging enemies, I would press "ctrl" to see what's lurking ahead, and assess the danger level of the enemies, I like to take down healer type and caster type first, then only the warrior type, if all the enemies were of same category, I would check with "C" to make sure I select the nearest, and "ctrl + click", then "space bar". My character would start running towards the selected target, and I would press the shortkey for Life Siphon, so when she reached casting range, my character would stop and start casting, I would que the skills I want to use, and since I already pressed the "space bar", whenever I was waiting for the energy or the skill to recharge, my character would use her default attack (I used a cold damage wand).

Oh, new skills. I bought Fireball, a projectile direct area effect spell, I like it very much; Inferno, most damaging direct area effect spell I had but it only hurts those around me, so I seldom use it since I was usually not in melee range; Water Trident, a fast recharge low energy usage direct damage projectile spell that knocks down moving target, it's an elite skill; Mist Form, an enchantment spell that makes me immune to physical attack for a short duration, but cannot inflict physical damage as well, also an elite skill. I tried the Mist Form but picked Water Trident as the elite skill to bring into mission most of the time, we can only bring one elite skill. Some of the skills I bought from Captain Greywind, I also used the elementalist ring I obtained from loot to learn from skill charm bought in Lion's Arch. I was constantly broke buying new skills and the expert salvage kits.

After that mad rush through mission 2, which we didn't get the bonus quest as well. I decided I had enough of that mission for that day, I went back to Northern Kryta Province with my Signet of Capture and found the Fire Imps, I wanted to get their Immolate skill but when I tried to use the Signet, it informed me that those Fire Imps were not boss monster, meh. I ran around trying to find a named enemy that uses Immolate, no luck there, and apparently I could only capture the skill of either my primary or secondary class. While I found a few named enemies that used necromancer's skills, they were either purchasable from skill trainer or were not something I want, Life Siphon was the only skill I used from my necromancer class in the end, touching skills (melee range) and skills that required sacrificing of health just did not interest me. I had decided to use only the Blood tree of necromancer class, and used my time during the WPE toying with the Fire, Water and Earth trees of the elementalist. I only found one named enemy that used elemtalist skills in Northern Kryta Province, but it didn't have anything special.

After the unfruitful attempt to use the Signet of Capture, I retired for the day and got some much needed sleep.

The third day, no friends were on when I logged on, the sad fate of being at a different time zone. I was determined to find out about the bonus quest, so I hopped over to D'Allesio Seaboard, took the warrior and monk henchmen and entered the first mission...

...and I found it!

There was a village under attack and whenever the party saved a villager, we got a 2% health and energy storage boost. After I saved all five villagers, a named villager had something to say and when I clicked on him, he gave me the bonus quest. He wanted me to bring an offering to an altar, I had no idea where the altar was, so thorough exploration was in order. The offering was held in hand, taking over the weapon readied but I could drop it to use my weapon and then pick it up again after battle. There were four weapon setups F1 to F4, same weapon/shiled/item can be used in more than one setup, so I have the cold wand and shield setup, the chaos wand and +energy off hand item setup, the same chaos wand and same shield setup, etc.

I ran about with "alt" pressed and constantly looked around with the right mouse button, while I didn't spot the altar, I found two chests! I also noticed something about the behaviour of the henchmen, if I "call target" (ctrl + click), the henchmen would engage immediately, the warrior would charge the target, the monk would start to use her default range attack. If I didn't "call target", and use, say, "C" and cast Life Siphon, the henchmen would wait until the enemy was within their awareness range before they respond.

What's so important about this? Well, if I wanted the warrior to engage the enemy where the enemy was, I would call target. If I wanted the battle to be nearer to where I was, say to pull the enemy to a killing zone, I would not call target, I would hit the enemy with a spell to activate it and back off, as long as I time it right, the henchmen would follow me instead of engaging, and then I would either call target or let the henchmen engage by their own awareness when the enemy was in the killing zone.
Some control of henchmen behaviour is good in my book. It'll be better if ArenaNet can implement some henchman control options, say, set the monk to heal priority, res priority, self preserving priority, stay put, etc.

I didn't get far thanks to my l33t navigation skill (not) when a friend came online and asked me where and what I was doing, I explained and he was eager to join. So I used the world map to quit the mission and met up with him at the staging area. We had to progress much into the main quest before we found new area that we hadn't explored, it brought us a long way uphill and the path was filled with big meanies, but we prevailed. We placed the offering on the altar and was rewarded with the completion of the bonus quest, which gave us 1000 exp, woot! It seemed like the bonus quest could be completed without completing the main quest, but we finished off the remaining of the mission anyway.

I had to deal with real life matters so I logged off after that. When I was online again, no friends nor guild mates seemed to be available so I went solo (with warrior and monk henchmen) exploring the area around Farmer's Market, without quite noticing it (because there was no "mist wall), I stumbled upon the Cursed Lands. Boy it was fun there! The enemies were tough, mainly because there were in large group and their social AI made them helped each each other and attacked in a big group. My team got wiped out, I tried again with warrior, ranger and monk henchmen, made slight progress but got wiped again.

Before I could attempt again, a guild member became available and we formed a party. I led him to Captain Greywind, then to Farmer's Market, then we made our way to the Cursed Lands. I know the guild mate is good at strategic planning, so I was glad that he took charge. We still got wiped out though. Meh. We then formed a party with some random players and headed to the Cursed Lands again, made some progress and then got slaughtered. After a few more attempts we finally beaten all the enemies in the Cursed Lands, woohoo!

We proceeded to the next area connected to the Cursed Lands, a battle left only one player alive and two enemies, the player was not a monk and had used his Signet of Ressurection on me, unfortunately I was resurrected in a weakened state and I had no means to heal myself, I tried to run away to heal up but the enemies swarmed me and promptly killed me before I could do anything useful. Meh. The player could not kill either of the enemies alone, nor could the enemies kill him, we watched the battle for a while, encouraging the player, but finally we decided to admit defeat because even if the player could kill the enemies, he could not resurrect the team. It had been a very challenging adventure nevertheless. Fun fun fun.

More guild members were online then and we decided to do the missions together. Since I had been through the first two missions, I let the other lead so I won't spoil their first time experience. I did tell them about the bonus quest in the first mission, but we failed to saved all the villagers in our first attempt. Without all five villagers saved, we did not get the bonus quest, so we quitted and redid it until we got it. But I forgot the way to the altar (ehem, l33t navigation skill) and before I realised it, we were already at the place to end the main mission. My warning was a tad too slow and someone talked to the main mission ender, so we were taken to the cut scene and then to the staging area of the second mission.

In the remaining of Saturday and on Sunday, I did a few more of the coop missions with friends and guild mates: The Wilds, Bloodstone Fen and Aurora Glade. I did not try the final mission, Riverside Province, I would if I had more time. I also didn't find out the other bonus quests except the one in The Wilds. When there was no one available, I explored the area outside Divinity Coast and The Wilds. I remember finding out that the explorable areas were connected, so if I was to start from Northern Kryta Province, I could get to the explorable area outside Divinity Coast through the explorable area that led to Farmer's Market.

I think late Saturday night I reached the maximum level of 20, I looked at my skills and realised I did not use the Earth skills much, so I refunded the points from Earth and redistributed my attribute points to 6 in Blood, 6 in Energy Storage, 12 in Fire and 10 in Water, which used up all the points. The maximum level one can have in any one skill tree was 12.

On Sunday I tried some crafting and got a "flame eye" that gave me +1 to Fire, a set of level 19 gloves and boots. Raw material for crafting was not abundent, after four days of playing, I just obtained (from salvaging) enough cloth to make the gloves and boots, and the material merchant in Lion's Arch was constantly out of stock for cloth. I didn't have enough glistering dust for the "flame eye", I had to purchase from the material merchant, who only buy and sell material in quantity of ten. The asking price for ten glistering dust when I bought the material was 220, the prices fluctuates with supply and demand. After selling off some bones and woods, I had enough money to buy the dust as well as to craft the flame eye. I think raw material drop rate could use some tweaking.

There's a skill trainer at Riverside Province, I bought some more skills and of those I like Immolate and Blurred Vision (enemy has 50% to miss attack). I also use the skill charm to get myself 24 hour use of the Maelstrom skill, a projectile area effect spell that deals damage over time and interrupt casting when hit. Since most of Sunday was spent playing in party, my skill bar changed to mostly area effect spells, I replaced the instant recharge Flare with Immolate, Immolate takes longer to recharge but has the nice setting enemy on fire attribute, and since I was usually in a party of mostly casters, I took on the role of heavy hitter, big spell but slower bombard rate. Well, that and because I had all those new spells that I just could not resist using. :P

Party dynamic was something I enjoyed immensely. When the party warrior called a melee type enemy, I would use "T" and cast the Blurred Vision, if she called caster type, I used Maelstrom. If single pull, I used Life Siphon, Immolate and Water Trident, if multiple, I used Fireball, Maelstrom and Ice Spikes (AoE spells). Trolls in GW are actually quite clever, often they would ignore the warriors and charge the healers and casters, some enemies had smarter AI.

I have enjoyed the WPE immensely, both while in solo play and especially when playing with the guild mates with similar play style, it was such a blast. There are still rooms for improvement, but I can see myself buying this game and enjoying it with a bit of polish of the current state. Currently I am intersted in the PvE aspect of the game, but perhaps after I tried all the missions, explored all the areas, exhausted all the character builds and skill combinations, and went through the PvE with Beyond Naked (the are -life regen items!) characters, (which IMO is already worth the money) I may try the PvP. Or perhaps even sooner than that if the guild is into PvP, so watch out for a naked team with eye catching tabard! :P