My feelings after the first weekend Beta were decidedly negative. The rather brief stress-test that followed, was a happier experience (in part, because the game was running much more smoothly.) The most recent weekend Beta, turned out to be even better, in fact, I'm a happy bunny again and so, for the sake of balance.......
Lots of things just "clicked" over the weekend, which naturally, made the game experience far more immersive and enjoyable. ANet have obviously been listening to the plentiful feedback from Beta players, and they've performed some "tweakage" in the interval between the Beta weekends.
This time, I chose to make another new character, namely a Norn Elementalist, which proved to be immensely enjoyable. I was pretty impressed by the amount
of damage she could achieve when tackling rampaging Minataurs hefty, club-wielding Dredge or whatever, with a chain of fiery blasts at her disposal. (Other attunements are also available, but the fiery ones tend to be a favourite for me. I have two Elementalist chars in GW1, so not new to playing this profession, however, the GW2 Ele seems much more powerful, imho. (I do hope ANet won't decide to make them less powerful any time soon.)
Interestingly though, I have read the opinions of some other players who described the GW2 Ele to be "squishy" ...I didn't find that. In fact, I thought her to be the least "squishy" GW2 char that I've tried, so far. But maybe that opinion will change as I progress.
The swimming and underwater experience was really impressive. There are special underwater skills which I found to be pretty effective against the various monsters lurking in the deep, clear waters. It was also quite exciting to swim along underwater passages, only to eventually surface in a large underground cavern, populated by a mob of enemy Dredge.
This time, I decided to give the gentle art of crafting a try. Not ever having tried it before, I was anticipating mega-boredom...wrong! It was actually pretty cool.
The only problem - for me - was that my inventory kept filling-up with stuff that I'd need to keep for crafting purposes. It was only after the Beta weekend closed, that I heard we could store mats/collectables in a Bank! Duh!
The trading system seems good, There is a very efficient set-up for selling goods to other players. The Black Lion Traders list the items being sought by other players, (or they can list items that a player wants to sell.) The transaction takes place quickly and without needing to personally make contact with buyer, or seller... although there is an option to "meet" if a player should want to do that.
There are some fun things to do aside from just killing things, of course, such as feeding bear cubs, or playing with Snow Leopard cubs... even having a snowball fight with children in a little hamlet. It has to be said, the creatures are all rendered in such amazing detail. I couldn't believe how real the appearance and behaviour was, in all the critters I encountered.
Still on the subject of realism.... in the old GW, if one walked too close to the edge of a cliff, or whatever, it was okay. Your char would just appear to be standing in mid-air, or would come to a stop. But GW2 is rather different..... as I discovered when I fell down a hole and couldn't get out again!
Clever, but the only solution was to waypoint-out of there, then return to the area to finish exploring. It didn't really help that the area concerned was so dark. It was impossible to see anything as one progressed along this particular underground path, even with screen brightness ramped-up to max. Gave me a chuckle though.
Roll on the next Beta Weekend.
