Guild Wars 2 - Standard Edition (PC DVD)

This is the most impressive game launch in years, and is likely to prove to be the second MMO to reach the stature of World of Warcraft.

GAMEPLAY
You should find yourself familiar with many of the game mechanics - generate a character, go questing, level up, join battlegrounds to play some PvP. No player should have any difficulty in getting into the game and having a good time. That said there are nuances that really polish up the playing experience and make it better than anything we've seen before - for example in every zone there are 'points of interest' and 'viewpoints' marked on the map, and you're rewarded for visiting them - in practice this means that you're rewarded for taking a little time out of the hack & slash to go exploring/puzzling to get up to the top of the tower and appreciating the beautiful world that the developers have made for us. You don't have to talk to a quest giver, or hand the quest in (though you can for a little colour if you like) - just stroll into the quest area and it will come up and you can get involved. The world is very slick, very beautiful, and absolutely vast.

The mechanics of gameplay are similarly refined. For combat itself you have up to 10 active abilities that work on cooldowns (there's no mana/rage requirements or similar). The abilities are determined by which type of weapons you have equipped, and most classes can easily switch between two weapon sets. For example as a warrior you can stroll around with a bow equipped which does pretty heavy damage if you get the drop on someone, then when they get to you you could switch to a sword and shield, replacing five of your abilities with slash/block moves to keep the guy busy while you finish him off. What this means is that there's a good deal of versatility available to every class through using the different weapons you can equip. Every class can greatly up their damage/toughness/support if they so desire at the expense of the other strengths. For example the elementalist (a very versatile class) can go fire (pure dps) air (good dps + some crowd control) water (weak dps + support healing) or Earth (moderate dps + movement debuffs) AND has a selection of underlying abilities for those aspects depending what weapons they are using. From the first you get the impression of minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. The remaining five abilities are unlocked with level. Every class can heal itself.

So is it any fun? GW2 scores big here. There are simply no grinding time sinks. You want to play PvP? You're automatically shifted to max level and given max gear when you go to a battle ground, and can just play. PvP comes down to skill, you'll never be bested by gear, and you can start playing at top level pretty much straight away if you so desire. You want to travel to the other side of the world? You can port to any waypoint from anywhere else (out of combat) for a trivial amount of cash. You want to play with your mate who's ten level lower? No problem, you get automatically downleveled when you go to an earlier zone, so your power will be shifted down to what's appropriate for that zone and away you go, rewarding you for playing all over their enormous world. Will I have to spend hours killing wombats to level up? Nope, the quests tend to be fairly interesting (but certainly not as good as in Star Wars Old Republic, who to my mind set a new standard), and there's no shortage, so if you don't fancy getting polymorphed into a pig to search for truffles, just move on. In combat movement is very important, both positioning (you'd be amazed at the impact a well placed tree can make) and dodging. The dodges work off energy, and are crucial to success - this will really help to keep the combat fresh and stop it being just a click/gear check.

GRAPHICS
The world is lovely, and hats off to the viewpoint idea which really stops you to appreciate it. The cut scenes are nicely done, but you only get those for your personal quests. The character graphics are of a high standard, allowing you to personalise in character generation, and customise you gear a bit too. I rate the character representation as pretty good, although as my characters are tiny it's hard to be sure :)

CRAFTING
Crafting is something that you can address when you're in the main cities. At any time, from any place you can click a button to move all crafting materials from your backpack to your bank, then from the cities you can use the materials at the crafting points to make what you want. There is allot of Xp available from gathering and crafting rewarding the early endeavour, the gear is pretty level equivalent, though having `best in slot' gear to hand as you level up is useful.
For the end game the crafted exotic gear is basically the best available, but is freely traded on the auction house, so if you're not bothered you'll lose very little by just flogging the mats you accumulate in the AH and buying the gear you want.
Now you'll need the skills levelled if you want build the legendary items, but these are just visually more impressive, they give no gameplay advantage, and there is a massive investment required to get the extra `sparkle'. You can have two crafting skills active, but if you ditch one you don't lose any of your advances, it's just inactive.

SOCIAL
General chat is about what you'd expect, and probably always will be. Aside from that on the positive you can join as many guilds as you like, facilitating specialisation. On the downside there is no functionality around getting a party together to run an instance - we're back to the old school standing in a city or outside the instance spamming "LF2M AC Explorer" messages in general chat. There were serious issues with getting your mates into the same `shard' of a location (shards are like separate instances of an area map to handle the overflow if too many players enter), but these have been fixed - there are now no issues with teaming up with your mates.

GRIPES
The game makes heavy use of your CPU (rather than graphics card) to run - so unless your PC is up to date, you'd be well advised to closely inspect the system requirements. I bought a bleeding edge PC 5 years ago, and it just can't handle the traffic of twenty guys shooting at each over in the World vs World battleground. There's a handful of bugs in the game (remarkably few for the launch of such an ambitious game), the log in server can't handle spike traffic, and the error messages you get don't give you any indication of what the problem is. The biggest irritation is the lack of support for getting the four extra players you need to run an instance - not only are you reduced to spamming general chat in Lions Arch, but after a couple of posts the game stops you from posting any more "due to excessive messaging" - really annoying when you're desperately trying to find the last man. That's it. Seriously, this is a VAST game, with no subscription charges, that's only been out for a few days and it's as polished as a diamond. Very very impressive, and gets full marks from me. It's also worth mentioning that when the servers go down (rare) the lines of communication are very good, which reduces the annoyance factor considerably. There are regular patches & updates, but these only last for a couple of minutes, so unless you're in the middle of an instance they don't really affect gameplay.

There's very little to fault in this game, and as an MMO it's simply better that WoW, and that is no mean feat on launch day. Time will tell how the longevity stacks up, so far the instances keep you on your toes and the pvp is of very mixed ability. Because it's not particularly difficult to get max gear, there isn't a huge grind to see the top content - personally I like this, not only do I play the game for the sake of just playing it & having fun, but I can also do other things without losing out. If WoW was crack, GW2 is more like a nice pint - yourself & your mates will find yourself knocking back a couple with a smile on your face, without the wild eyed compulsion, sleep deprivation & broken relationships that Warcraft left in it's wake. It's just fun, it's not a second job.
I have absolutely no qualms in giving GW2 a hearty recommendation. It's a superb game, the most impressive MMO in many years, all yours for a one off payment, and I'm certain that it's going to take off in a big way.

I loved the original Guild Wars, wasted countless days in PVP and guild matches. Got into tournaments, hall of heroes, a high ranked PVP guild. It was a blast. Made great online friends from my guilds.

GW2 was amazing at launch, busy, loads of peeps on the servers, the first impressions are overwhelmingly good.

After 6 months and a bit of a break from GW2, I can get myself to get back into GW2. I've left my toons in limbo, nothing interests me about this game anymore.

Somethings missing, something about the whole landscape is incredibly repetitive. Heart quests are largely the same and get really boring after you've cleared several zones of them. The landscape is far quieter than it used to be. If I die, it's unlikely I'm going to have a passer by rescue me because of the emptiness of the zone. I'm also going to be quite lonely when the scripted events pop up, not enough players around to make it fun. I'm not going to see a horde of 30 players taking on a giant these day. Equipment doesn't interest me, the loot drops are boring and unsatisfying. Crafting often feels pointless, you can play the game just as well without doing any crafting because of the auto levelling whenever you go into a lower level zone. The sense of level progression and becoming powerful is non existent. Be a level 60 and I still feel like a noob when in a low level zone, its all the same, just the damage numbers are bigger or smaller depending on the zone level.

The personal story is a joke. An entire game of watching different toons having a conversation across the screen. Hardly inspiring for cut scenes and personal progression.

Join a guild you say! Despite the open free roaming maps, ironically, GW2 is more anti-social than the previous GW was. No longer forced into parties for missions and events (except dungeons), no one seems to play anything together anymore, no more teamwork, no more of the holy trinity. All the guilds I joined were largely useless. I still wandered the banal and empty landscapes alone, occasionally passing dribs and drabs of other players doing their own thing.

GW2 has taken a brave move in removing the trinity and making the map totally open to all without instancing. I commend the developers for taking this punt. But in return, we have a game that doesn't present a tight and progressive story with a sense of achievement, and it doesn't bring players together to explore the wonderful world Anet has lovingly crafted. The quests are the same old same old, and you are far more likely to be doing them alone these days. The scripted events are fantastic...when you have other players around to help out.

I feel sad when writing this, because GW2 could have been the nuts and I want it to succeed. But it's missing that magic something that won't bring me back to playing anymore.

Are you sick of Loot drama? Hate having that node you're after taken while you're killing something? Loathe having a high level player running farming builds through the region you're carefully working through killing all the mobs you need for a quest? Tired of spawn camping? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then this is the MMO for you. All of these major MMO headaches have been taken out of this game. No mob 'tapping', everyone can get kill-credit, quest gains and loot from mobs. If you can see a node on your map it will still be there when you get to it no matter how often it has been harvested from in the meantime. High level players are scaled down to appropriate level in lower level areas. It all works.

The second of the Guild Wars games looks beautiful from the moment you hit install. Stunning graphics and character models that almost seem to leap from the screen add to an experience that is almost totally immersive.

The first Guild Wars game was totally instanced, apart from the city hubs. Guild Wars 2 has the opposite plan, keeping us all in the same instances, split into multiple zones over the world map, except for dungeons and personal story quest instances. Dynamic events in the world take the place of traditional quests, so although there is a steep levelling curve ahead it does not feel like a grind. It feels more like an old fashioned 40 man raid on a boss, minus the loot drama, as big events trigger and more and more players appear to help.

Guild Wars 2 retains the 'no subscription, free forever' ethos of the original game. You are able to use real money to purchase gems for use in the online store for mini pets, cosmetic upgrades, extra character slots, and temporary boosts. But you can also trade ingame gold to buy those gems from other players, so you need never spend another penny if you don't want to.

The world itself is huge, with different character creation options presenting you with a different personal storyline, it's almost like a new game each time you roll another character, even of the same race. Play as Human, Asuran, Sylvari, Norn or Charr and choose from eight professions. There is no dedicated healer role and as a retired healer in both Guild Wars One and another MMO, I can say that the game is better for it.

There were a few technical issues at the launch of the headstart that had some players very frustrated, a few are still unable to play, but the support team behind the game issued updates via Twitter and Facebook on an almost hourly basis and the kinks were generally ironed out quite quickly. As we head to the official launch we have just had a new build go live and I hope that everything goes more smoothly for Arenanet now. It would be such a shame to have negative reviews go up from people frustrated by technical issues before they've had a chance to get them resolved and get into this awesome game.

Your character names from the original game will be reserved for you as long as you have logged into GW1 at some point recently. The Hall of Monuments that we all spent ages filling now gives us our rewards as we begin the adventures of our original character's descendents many years after the events of the War in Kryta. Go polish your armour and feed your ranger's pet, be patient with any installation or technical hitches as you install, and then jump in and have fun.