World Preview Event - Scrape

Guild Wars
http://www.guildwars.com
World Preview Event
October 28, 2004 – October 31, 2004

What is Guild Wars you might be wondering? Even if you're not, I'm going to badly tell you. So, much of this might be inaccurate, but it does not matter much.

Guild Wars is another of the many MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) out there. Or perhaps not, since from what I experienced, it was only a six player maximum for a mission. (More on this later.)

I believe the company calls it a CORPG (competitive online roleplaying game).

But this one is special. The company (ArenaNet) does not charge you a monthly fee! Oh my.

Guild Wars is set in a medievalish fantasy world with all of the bells and whistles you might expect.

The company just had its second beta test (so to speak) over this past Halloween weekend (October 28 - 31). It is referred to as a World Preview Event (people from all over the world could play). It was free to download the client and play.

Unlike most companies that offer upgrades through downloadable patches, Guild Wars works by streaming the patches. While you are playing (or connecting to the server), all content will automatically be streamed to your computer as well as applied.

So, backtrack to Friday. I download this client and run the program to download the software for the game. (It was roughly 20 MB.)

Lo and behold, there was the character creation screen. Moments later, Scrape the Tortured was created.

The main thing I disliked about the creation process was the naming process. For English speaking users, they require at least two names (such as a first and a last). I doubt this will change, but I hope it soon allows just one name.

But the rest of the character creation process was groovy. You can be either gender as they are equal, except in looks. Currently (and most of what I am talking about just applies to this beta, for things will change) there are six classes, or professions as they are listed on the website. Elementalist, mesmer, monk, necromancer, ranger, and warrior. You have to pick two classes; a main class and a secondary class.

My ideal combination would be a necromancer/elementalist, so I went for a warrior/ranger.

Scrape the Tortured, the female w/r was ready for action.

I started off in some forest-like area. This was the tutorial. It was basically the initial feel of the game and to make my way to Lion's Arch.

While completing the tutorial, I played around with the friends feature. I added Lurker Drasca, for I figured he would be a loser like me and play constantly. I was right. Some of my fellow Lurkers were already in a Lurker Lounge guild, so I joined up with them.

Lion's Arch is a monster-friendly town where you can buy and sell items, learn new skills, and even team up for missions.

Throughout the portion of the game they let us testers access, there were grouping areas. In these grouping areas, this is where you form your group for a mission. Up to six players as I mentioned before for a mission. But in the grouping areas, Lion's Arch, and certain other areas, you can basically have an unlimited amount of players. Also, these areas have districts, which are basically like different servers.

After doing missions with a combination of friends and random people, I ended up getting to level 19 by Sunday. They start you off at level 15, and 20 was the maximum.

Each profession has skills, but you can only have 8 equipped for a mission. You can easily change your skill selection before and after missions, but not during. I like how they did this. It adds a bit of challenge.

One of the things I did not like, as I saw many complain about, is that when you have a summoned creature that dies, you get a death penalty for that mission. You also get death penalties when you yourself die in the mission. Fortunately the death penalties do not last beyond the current mission.

They did have a death counter, which I liked. It was useable by typing /deaths. It only displays your character's death total. This better be included in the character profile.

Ah yes, the character profile. There are four tabs. The first is hero, which is your character's statistics. The second is the inventory. The third is the skills. The fourth is the quest log.

The hero tab is definitely lacking. It does not display your total damage, defense, resistance (if there is any), and so on. This definitely needs improvement.

I even ventured into the Gladiator’s Arena, which they definitely need to modify. I like how they randomly group you with other players, but you should also be able to have selected battles. After one go at it, my team made it to the fifth round.

Another annoying thing was the video scenes. None of them were any good, and they make you wait through and watch them after almost every (if not all) mission. Since you are in a party, you would have to wait for your other members, but there should still be the option to skip these scenes. Perhaps if all of the members hit enter (or some other appropriate key) they can be skipped. Or in the game options, if all of the players have an option set to skip the scenes. Whatever the method, something good has to be done.

This was mentioned elsewhere, but I agree. I do not like the attribute distribution system. I just don’t like how they have it set up.

Ugh, I’ve added to this mess a bunch of times already, but hopefully this will be the last time. Item drops. Yes, that’s right. The moments of anticipation so many players yearn for. This is another unique feature (from my experience in games at least). Items are randomly (although that could be argued) assigned to players in a mission. Trading is similar to that of Diablo II.

As for bugs, I came across a few while playing and reported them using the /bugs feature.

Overall, I had a decent time. I spent a few days geeking it up with my online friends and ignoring my real-life friends.

I am neutral as to getting the game (and even preordering it so I can participate in upcoming betas). I have other things that need deciding first.

I will say, as I just mentioned, it was great cooping with my friends again. If a lot of them are going to get the game, this alone is a good reason for me to get it. They are going to need someone to bother them with bad jokes when they play.