All the skills please.

I've been playing GW since betas and love the game. I have Prophecies and Factions and will most likely be getting Nightfall. But there is something that really irks me about these special event beta test weekends.

You want me to BETA test the new classes? You really want to test skill balance and possilbe exploits? THEN UNLOCK THE CHARACTER FOR ME.

This is the second such event in the expansion beta testing process where they give me a weekend to test new skills and abilities and I have to spend a good portion of it just grinding faction to get anything.

I had the misfortune of having to move this weekend and did not have any time to be grinding out skills.

What is the point of withholding? I want to see if the new skills and classes are worth it and Anet wants to check things for balance. So give me ALL that I need; runes, weapon upgrades, skills, and let me go to my lab and make up some nasty builds.

I would be interested in hearing anyones speculations as to why the do it this way. Just frustrating.

Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get over it. Skills were locked so that we would have a chance to unlock a select few to make an organized build and test it out. Also to give us a chance to unlock skills! I wouldn't even have played the preview if I couldn't unlock any skills because it would feel like a massive waste of time not being able to unlock anything. I can read the skills on websites and make my own ideas about effective builds anytime after the event.

The premades are there to be used. I only unlocked a couple skills myself, and a few runes. Besides, they gave double faction the weekend before so people could stock up to unlock some stuff right off the bat.

i took a few hours to consider all the skills and then worked towards unlocking what i thought would make a good combo... i found a few good aoe's a signet of piety, and avatar of dwayna... then i went into the RA and found i was nearly invincible... so friday early afternoon i post the build on the wiki... a few hours later i am reading about all the invincidervish builds... seems others followed the same path and tweaked the build to perfection... Well all in all i got a really good feel for the dervish playstyle over the weekend, testing several other builds once the caster derv became fotm. It will be really interesting to see what can be done with them in pve. Im pretty sure that between the thousands of people who spent all the time they could testing like me, A-net should have gotten all the data they need. (especially the severe drop in Dervish team effectiveness at the end of the weekend, as people learned to react to them)

I had the same reaction at first. I was annoyed because I don't usually play PvP. That meant I was restricted to the premades. Had I known in advance that I was going to have to buy most of the skills I probably would have ground out some faction in advance.

Still, they gave us medallions for the weekend. 50 of those for 1000 Balthy points.

The medallions are still in effect... I think they are here for good

Oh, spew me a clichet. Maybe "cheese with that whine". You can express your opinion without attempting to insult me.

So are you saying if I had all the skills that I couldn't make "an organized build"?

Reading and contemplating builds on forums and websites is not the same as having an opportunity to test them.

It is not a waste of my time to have an adaquate sampling of a product before I purchase it.

So far, your best argument for the way in which they did it, was that it gave you a chance to unlock skills. Well it appears you've already made up your mind to buy it and thus are in a race to unlock skills before its release. Well I have not. I still think it would give Arenanet and myself a better Beta if I were able to have full unlocks.

Back before you likely heard of the game, during the original game betas, around the time of skill rings and exotic skill traders, they introduced the idea of PVP characters and let you expiriment with all the unlocks. It was an awesome experience and helped convince me to get the game as I was able to get a picture of what PVP could be like.

Well considering almost every build they let us use had some major flaw or supoer overed powered BS.

And this may just be wishful thinking, but maybe they wanted to test particular things they already knew about or wanted to fine tune the basic way they invision a class working....

Considering how soon they are releaseing new info and box art id say that probably not the case as they would had to make some major tweaks real fast....its a nice thought tho

Spare me the nostalgic bullcrap. Times change and they changed the way it works for a reason. It gives people something to work for and something to accomplish to lock all the skills before hand. If you don't like it, go complain to ANET, not us. support.guildwars.com

Again, you don't respond to the points I make.

Let me say it to you as simply as I can.

From the sound of your argument, you have already decided to get Nightfall. In which case I understand your desire to unlock all the skills. That's fine.

I (someone different from yourself) have not decided, and simply think it's better to be able to sample the product in full as they have done in the past.

A forum is a fine place to offer criticisms and suggestions for Anet. You're the only person who's responded with hostillity and rudeness, and an innabillity to politely discuss the current beta system. So please quit posing as an emissary for guildwarsguru.com. I imagine if it were possible to look through your post history we'd find more of you're offensive trampling of threads. For that reason I probably won't be responding to anymore of your posts.

A little advice for on line forums and life in general. You don't have to be hateful to people you disagree with. You'll foster miscommunication and you'll likely never win anyone over to your way of seeing things.