Your FPE Experience - New Info

http://www.guildwars.com/events/inga...onspreview.php

Competitive missions... the RA of Factions?

It sounds awesome. I'm even more excited than I was before. Though yes, if they just randomly pair you up with people you don't know, it will be disappointing.

Your FPE Experience

The Factions Preview Event could begin with your creation of a Factions roleplaying character in an area of Cantha called The Marketplace. There, a series of NPCs will provide you information about the factions of Cantha—The Luxons and the Kurzicks—and will assist you in getting to the capital city of the faction that you choose. Once you arrive in the capital city, you may explore the areas of the world that are opened for this event. You may also undertake the four Factions missions available in the FPE or engage in an exciting new form of PvP, the alliance battle. Here is a bit of information about the mission types that you can experience:

Story Missions: Experience two of the missions that let you participate in the quest to stop the traitor Shiro Tagachi. Visit the outposts for Eternal Grove and Gyala Hatchery to jump right into the storyline!

Competitive Missions: There are two teams within a competitive mission; one each representing the Kurzicks and the Luxons. Getting into the mission is quick and easy: You simply click "Enter Mission" and you automatically are partied with other members of your faction in either Ft. Aspenwood or The Jade Quarry.

Competitive mission objectives vary from mission to mission, but here is an example: The Kurzicks are nearing completion of a new sonic weapon, called the 'Vengeance of the Gods,' that will give them a significant advantage in the war. In the Ft. Aspenwood competitive mission, you will join the Luxons in an attempt to break into the Kurzick fortress and destroy the weapon before it can be completed, or you will join the Kurzicks and attempt to repel the Luxon invasion. Both sides will be competing for control of amber mines, as amber can be used to strengthen fortress defenses, increase the speed at which the Vengeance of the Gods is constructed, or increase the power of the massive siege turtles that the Luxons are using to break into the Kurzick fortress. During the mission, you will encounter members of the opposing faction, as they are trying to take control of the same amber mines.

As with any competitive mission, although you will encounter enemy players, completing these missions relies more heavily upon killing NPC’s or monsters rather than engaging members of the opposing faction in combat. Should you choose to engage the enemy faction, you will find that the gameplay mechanics are different than elsewhere: There is no penalty to those who are slain (no death penalty) and those who die are re-spawned quickly.

Try Alliance Battles!

On the other hand, you might want to bring in your existing PvP characters, or create new ones, to take part in PvP on the Battle Isles. Or you can bring your roleplaying characters to join an alliance battle in Cantha. For alliance battles, naturally your guild will want to ally with others within your faction. By speaking to your faction ambassador in your capital city, either House zu Heltzer or Cavalon, you can join the battle to help your faction gain control of outposts. The combat is 12 versus 12 consisting of 3 groups of 4 players each playing against one another either collectively or as individual battle squads. The world map will visibly change as alliances conquer more of Cantha with their victories and the winners will be recognized within the game.

A Few More Details:

• For the Factions Preview Event, your newly-created characters will begin at Level 20.
• You will start out with 20 skills and will then speak to an NPC to select a secondary profession.
• Selecting a secondary profession will gain you an additional 20 skills.
• Your guild must choose a faction—Luxon or Kurzick.
• You can play four higher-level missions—two story missions and two competitive missions—appropriate for your Level-20 characters.
• You will be able to experience 15 quest areas.
• For all Factions roleplaying characters, certain game elements will be inaccessible. These include: guild halls, the Xunlai (storage) Agents, and Battles Isles. Ship travel to and from Cantha will also be disabled during the event. These game elements are locked down to help assure that unfinished or unbalanced items acquired during the event do not impact the game economy in the long term.
• Challenge missions and elite missions will not be available during the FPE.
• Item and skill unlocks earned by both your roleplaying and PvP characters during the FPE will remain on your account.
• After the event, all Factions roleplaying character inventories and levels will be reset in preparation for the launch of Factions.

http://www.guildwars.com/events/inga...onspreview.php

awesome info. But are we going to be able to buy armors and see how they look like?

from what i understand we will be able to test the new armors, but of course i don't really know, just gotta wait i suppose.

Wow..there is going to be some massive chaos in alliance battles.

Gah. I still want an answer to my question

With Alliance PvP battles, do you make one team of 12, or three teams of 4 that are randomly matched together?

thank you for the info

Kudos for this compiliation, it beats scanning through the numerous FAQs and such.

Read it again. It was answered.

so this thing starts what time according to gwguru clock?
oooooo soo cool! cant wait

I wonder if the 40 skills you start out with are considered "unlocked", thus allowing you to keep them when you later buy GW:F?

That's a good question... I kinda doubt it. Can you imagine 40 "Skill Unlocked" pop-ups on your screen!

But any skills you get from a quest should be...

This was asked before and this was Gaile's reply:

OH man...im breakin out into hives...i just cant wait for the FPE!!!!!...all the excitement!!!!

I'm going straint to Alliance battles when this event starts.

Regardless of wether or not you are randomly paired with other groups of 4 or not, how will the game treat these teams?

Will spells like Heal Party heal all 12 of you or only the 4 in your subgroup? Will you have all 12 Health bars on your screen (bad for people with small monitors), or only the 4 in the subgroup once again? Or would your teammates be treated more as friendly NPCs?

I imagine it will treat them as npc allies are now, listed below your group with the pets. But we shall see.

Yay! I can't wait to try these Alliance Battles, and the stuff about going to the Factions' capital city and joining your guild to that Faction sounds interesting. Most of all, I'll probably be exploring all these quest areas.

I'm guessing Gaile will probably start up a feedback thread and/or bugs thread, so keep an eye out for that, they will surely want feedback as it is a 'beta'.