Preorders begin April 10th and can be bought here. Pre-orders will be available at major retailers as well, but I'm not 100% sure if they follow that same date. There are three versions for the pre-order, priced at $60/$80/$150 USD. All versions come with beta access, a "Hero's Band" item, and a three day headstart.
The beta events are scheduled to begin late April, but no exact date for when they will begin or end has been released. This also means Headstart access and the release date itself are unknown. It is confirmed that during headstart access, any character/guild name you use will carry over to live, so you can reserve names then. However since it's a headstart access to the full game, that is really to be expected. A 1-day headstart has also been announced, but as far as I know it hasn't been said how you get into it, as all beta copies unlock the 3-day headstart.
Pre-purchasing specifically gives you a code you can use on Arenanet's GW2 Site that gives you Beta access. If you purchased from a conventional store (gamestop, GAME, whatever) you will need to return there on release of the game to get your boxed copy of the full game. Aka: keep your receipt!
The "Hero's Band" is given to every character on your GW2 account (assuming any character you ever make), and gives the following bonuses: +2 Power, +2 Precision, +2 Toughness, +2 Vitality, +2 Condition Damage, +2% Critical Damage, +2 Healing
The game, after release, will feature microtransations. Now don't flee in terror just yet, the payment method isn't evil, it's just...misused a lot. Arenanet has given us a little re-assurance in that department:
quote arenanet
Here’s our philosophy on microtransactions: We think players should have the opportunity to spend money on items that provide visual distinction and offer more ways to express themselves. They should also be able to spend money on account services and on time-saving convenience items. But it’s never OK for players to buy a game and not be able to enjoy what they paid for without additional purchases, and it’s never OK for players who spend money to have an unfair advantage over players who don’t.
Quests: Quests in GW2 do not follow the usual "Collect X carcasses for lazy NPC Y" formula. The quests will actually reflect the area and situation around you. If you happen across some troll beating up stuff, you'll get a quest to save them, things like that. Here's an example that's thrown around a lot on what these quests will look like:
Town A is being attacked by marauding pirates! Kill them!
Fail to kill fast enough: Town's burning down, put out the fires! Once complete, back to #1 you go!
The mayor of the town tells you about their hideout, time to go find it!
So this is their hideout, time to kill some pirates!
Find the boss pirate, kill the boss pirate!
After killing boss pirate, Town A gets to relax in peace for many a mont-WHELP MORE PIRATES back to #1!
You can happen upon the town at any point, it's not a scripted event linked to any specific quest. It's a part of the world. Players could find that town in any of it's peaceful/burning/sieged states, and work from there. If another player's already there, the difficulty will scale up, so that the content is still challenging. It's all designed to make the player feel as if the world is alive and working, rather than something you proc by quest items. Thus, why Arenanet refers to these as "Dynamic Events".
Dungeons: Dungeons are 5man and all have two versions. A story-linked version, and an "explorable" version. The first time a player runs a dungeon, there will be a story there, something interesting to run through. If you enter it again, a harder version will await you. One that might make a little more sense as to why you're going back. Instead of "you've defeated the evil dragon lord and saved the town!" *re-enter* "Oh no! He's still alive and we were mysteriously never saved in the first place!".
Raiding: There is no end-game raiding content for large organized groups of players. Aka, "conventional raiding". Dynamic Events can hit a large amount of people, and are also public content, not private/instanced. Dungeons are 5man. Some of the reasoning behind this decision was no doubt the combat system and how to effectively make the most use out of it with game mechanics, but Arenanet has also stated that they didn't want to follow the usual trend with MMO's and raiding as it made no sense. Aka: Grind to max level using quests/dungeons/whatever, then after that only this newfangled "raiding" thing matters. It's like you're playing a different game the second you hit that raiding tier, whereas with GW2, they're keeping it the same game. The difficulty just goes up with your level.
Characters
All classes in GW2 do not have a set "role". There is no Tank, Healer, or DPS. The combat is designed to be much more fluid and free-flowing. Since the entire game is designed around balancing this combat effectively, battles designed to be difficult, will still be difficult. There's also no "Auto-attack", everything you do is a skill. There's a spam skill on a low cooldown, but it still functions differently than normal MMO AA's.
The #1 tip from Press-Beta attendees: Dodge! DODGE! DOOOOOOOODGE! Skills in GW2, including those used by enemies, generally come in the form of AoE or projectiles. You can dodge these. You should dodge these. You need to dodge these. If you don't, you will generally die and be a floormat. All characters have a baseline dodgeroll thing and a "stamina/recharge" bar attached to it's use. Utilizing this dodge effectively will be incredibly important, both for PvE and PvP. Arrows fired from other people using a bow? Can dodge 'em. If you fire your bow at an enemy who's moving perpendicular to you, be it player, boss, or even mostly-harmless rabbit, you can expect to miss.
These are the races of GW2: Human, Charr, Norn, Asura, Sylvari. There is a ton of information available about the races on the GW2 site
Guild membership is account wide, and you can add as many guilds as you like. You will be able to choose, at any time and on any character, which guild chat you are viewing and what guilds you are currently affiliated with.
PvP
This is coming mainly in the form of "World vs World vs World" (this is not to say conventional PvP will not exist). Three servers/worlds/shards/whatever all fight it out on an open-join battleground full of chokepoints, checkpoints, castles, rivers, etc. And these points don't just kind of "exist", they can be captured for the benefit of your server. These matches are made to be ridiculously huge. How huge? Huge. Yes, those extra zones you see are still all part of the same instance. Those portals in the first screenshot? Bam. There's bound to be a lot of videos up on Youtube of it already, (thus easy to search for). If you want to watch some gameplay just kind of happen, there's twenty minutes of it going on in the background of this podcast.
These WvWvW matches won't just end after fifteen minutes of arena gameplay. These are consistent, long wars between three servers. After a set period of time (not minutes/hours probably, I'm thinking like, days/weeks?) the matchups will change and new sets of servers will fight it out.
quote arenanet
While inside the organized PvP area, all characters will be the same power level and will have access to the same equipment.
Underwater Breathing Mechanics are for Wusses
Okay so this I'm pretty hyped for after seeing the footage. Was skeptical at first, because really, how often is the underwater content for RPG's absolutely horrible and/or annoying? So, firstly I should mention there is no breathing mechanic or anything that makes underwater combat a chore. That stuff nobody likes about underwater levels in any game forever? Arenanet figured we didn't want it. Which is good, since we all loathe that stuff. That's not to say there aren't any new challenges however.
So when you go underwater, some foam and bubbles will hit your screen and your skillset will completely change. Ranged weapons turn into things like Harpoon guns, magical weapons into Tridents. Skills that may have just rooted or slowed enemies on the ground, may do something completely different if they're even there at all. Skills that are able to be used underwater are designed specifically for use there, you won't be trying to make a round peg fit in a square hole.
This is a look at underwater combat, as well as a "peek" at an underwater dungeon. Yes, those exist. There's even a boss fight and a weapon that SUMMONS SHARKS TO DO YOUR BIDDING.
Need I say again, SHARKS!
Platformers, in my MMO?
It's more likely than you think.
Rift did this to an extent, but GW2 is just taking this into a way awesome direction. 3D Platforming, complete with instant death. These are not something you're really led to by anything (or are required to do), Arenanet labels them as "Secrets". Things you have to go out of your way to find, go out an explore, etc etc. While they are not required for anything because of this, they are really fun, and I'm sure exploring to try and find these will also be pretty interesting for people who fancy themselves explorers.
Thread Recap (last 10 posts from newest to oldest)
Sep 23, 12 at 7:10pm
ambing1
interesting video. it's nice to sometimes look back and see some reactions and posts before a game launches.
I honestly would suggest you get the client only from the official site and nowhere else, if you get it from a different website it's very likely infected with a trojan horse to steal your account(s). Same applies to many other games, besides, the client is very tiny and the big amount of files are dl'd directly from the official site.
Aug 25, 12 at 8:44pm
ambing1
Thanks! I've been looking for some good read to help me enjoy this game. the materials listed here are definitely very helpful. by the way, i got my game client from gamearena in this link: -link removed let me know if you also get this from here. the download speed is fast enough.
Aug 23, 12 at 11:45am
Lorx
I don't PvP much, but this is what I know off the top of my head, with some help from google for images. Hope this helps LloydToS, I can try to hunt down more specific things if you want, but there's also a stress test later today (1pm-2pm Pacific Time) that would give you a chance to try it out if you're a pre-purchaser or whatever is the requirement for getting into the beta events (I forget if it's pre-purchase or any kind of purchase).
When in GW2 PvP you're scaled up in stats and/or level to be on par with others, lv1 players can fight lv80 players just fine. Also there's specific PvP gear available from PvP merchants, etc etc. There's no need to PvE to fight in PvP effectively.
Modes: There's the 5v5 thing (I think they're all 5v5, they're small scale), and WvW for PvP modes. 5v5 PvP, from what I've played, works much in the same way other games handle PvP in terms of baseline...mechanics, but since the classes and battlesystem are so much different and less focused on chain stunning it does play out much differently. Feels a lot less...annoying, and more fun. WvW plays out much differently in mechanics as well though, it doesn't play like common PvP from other MMOs. It's supposed to feel like you're a piece of something much bigger, large armies of players assaulting bases, some guerrilla warfare groups picking off key assets that aren't well defended, non-competitive players gathering resources in order to fuel the war effort, it's all there. I've had battles with at least like 20 people attempting to assault a castle full of guys raining down as much death as they could. So yeah, it pulls off that "you are part of a large war" feeling really well. Each of the 3 servers in a fight has their own section of the WvW map full of castles and mountains and villages and whatnot, which are all connected to a central map with even more of that and one huge castle. Everything can be fought over, taken over, sieged, destroyed, repaired, upgraded, etc. Maps: I found this post via google that shows off all the maps for PvP. The last one with the ship allows you to go and fight under it, there's sharks that defend the control point down there, it's pretty cool. You can also fire cannons or throw the cannon balls or something like that. There's some video footage and talk about the map 22 minutes into this video. Most of the maps at least seem to have something quirky or special about them, some of them have some difficult monsters you can kill for an advantage (like Baron/Dragon or whatever in League of Legends/DotA games). Here is an image from the first post of this thread showing the WvW map in more detail. It's ridiculously huge.
You're correct about client vs account I believe. It might ask you to restart or something if it needs to change region based on your IP, but it's all the same client as far as I know.[/div]
Aug 23, 12 at 11:08am
LloydToS
Lorx I'm mostly trying to find an overview of features, I read the blog post on the official website but that didn't make things clear. In wow for example you could look up the various battle fields, how many people vs how many people and so on.
Another thing, I just started the client download. I'm going to assume that the client is not what determines your region, rather your account will (when I register?).
Does anyone know where I can find some more in depth pvp information about this game? I've searched around a bit but I haven't been able to find some solid information other than 5v5 and world vs world.
With 3 BWE's behind us it's more or less all been known. Is there something specifically you're looking for information-wise, do you want gameplay videos, or do you just need a bigger overview? I could try to dig up something more tuned to what you're looking for.
Does anyone know where I can find some more in depth pvp information about this game? I've searched around a bit but I haven't been able to find some solid information other than 5v5 and world vs world.
Jul 04, 12 at 10:09am
MarkusK
Nice video footage, i love it!
May 10, 12 at 4:19am
samueltruelove
It honestly looks so professional ...I loved these screenshots...
Apr 25, 12 at 12:30am
Lorx
Yeah, it's one of the reasons why I'm glad you don't have a lot of fluff abilities or keybinds in GW2, it's all very much streamlined.
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