Review of Feb BWE

All my previous characters are kinda screwed up from the previous betas and wipes, so I started by deleting them all and creating a new character. This is when I notice the first change - no secondary profession? What is up with that? Oh well, let's see how that plays out. As soon as I click Play, I find out about another new feature, an opening cinematic. The cinematic is a little rough around the edges, but it is live and it hints about some cataclysm about to happen. A small pause later and I am zoned into Ascalon and quickly realize something else, I am completely without skills? Okay, this is definitely not your father's Guild Wars. Everyone around me seems a little perplexed as well and the majority of the questions are about secondary profession and skills, in particular, where is the skill trainer? Oh well, there is an NPC right in front of me with an exclamation point above his head.

I find out that I am new recuit serving a 2 year term in the Army of Ascalon. The quest text is customized for each class with a little humor aimed at the non-warrior classes. I am sent to the gate to speak with a recruit trainer but before I venture into the new zone I decide to check out the city first. Guild Wars' cities are pretty simplistic and Ascalon is no exception. I did find a new type of NPC for me though, a Collector. The Collector wants to trade for a particular item. The normal NPC's were all there as well, except there is no skill trainer. The new UI is a little rough around the edges as well but Arenanet has stated that the UI is still a work in progress. I did find the new expandable Menu button to be very convenient. I also played around with the new interface for inventory and discovered that I only have my backpack. Wow, characters really start new now! Well, with no money and no skills I better get going on my quest and head out of the city.

I am greeted by 2 quest NPC's, a trainer and a little girl. The trainer tells me that my first quest is to kill all the Skales down at the river and the little girl wants me to find her lost flute. I did take 2 different class characters through this first part and the trainer NPC is specific for each class and has different quests based on your class. A very good example of what Arenanet is capable of with customized scalable instanced areas. The beginning area also scaled either according to character level or quest progression. I also found another collector looking for Skale drops and he wanted to trade for a pouch, cool more storage. I went down to the river and killed all the skales I could find and also found the flute. There was also another NPC that needed help collecting eggs so I helped him and received an egg that I never did figure out what do with. I went back to the trainer and received 2 skills and some XP as a reward. I needed to vendor the drops I got so I headed back to Ascalon. I spoke with the original quest giver in town and received some more XP and further quests including information on how to obtain a secondary profession and further skills in my primary profession.

I think I played through pretty much all of the new areas and completed most of all the quests I found. The quests were varied and helped propel the storyline. The storyline about the king and how he ascended to the throne was interesting. The profession trainer quests progressed nicely resulting in more skills and background about your chosen profession. The Catacombs area was probably my favorite new zone with different entry/exit points all linked to aboveground areas. Everything I did was soloable and I ended up reaching level 7.

At level 3 you are able to enter the academy. The NPC warns that once you enter the academy that you will be "gone" for a long period of time and I deduced that this meant the end of Ascalon. So I put off entering until I had done a lot of quests and exploring. When I did enter, I was surprised to find that I was randomly grouped with 3 or 4 others and sent into a PvP battle. It kinda happened fast and I had no idea what was going on so I picked out a warrior enemy and started attacking. Well, our team lost and things got a little fuzzy after that. Our group was sent out to clear some area which we cleared easily. After that I was shown another cinematic, this time of The Searing. I should have probably went through the Academy and the cinematic a few times to really understand what was going on. I am not sure how/why I survived The Searing and I never found out if there is a way to go back? I think the cinematic was either a little rushed or left incomplete intentionally and I hope it gets some polish and becomes a major feature of the release version.

Technically, the game played just as it has during every event I have been part of, flawlessly. I did not encounter any bugs, the streaming worked fast and just a small bit of lag when zoning into common zones. I didn't have any disconnects or login problems and no server crashes. The visuals of the new zone are just as awe-inspiring as the rest of the zones I have seen, especially The Catacombs.

There are some things that I would really like to see with this new area. I did not complete every quest and I probably didn't see everything in all the different zones so maybe some of what I wanted to see is already there but I didn't have time to get to it. I suppose that Arenanet may also be holding some things secret until the release.

• Quests/content that deal with the impending doom of The Searing. I realize that The Searing is supposed to catch everyone by surprise but I think it would be cool if your character learned about it but was too late to do anything about it.

• Scale the Academy and more information about what is going on, much, much, much more information. I only did the Academy once but I was confused the entire time. I have not spent much time doing any of the PvP content yet so I am about as good a newbie as you are going to find. Maybe a short tutorial on groups, communicating and strategy? A warm up battle against regular NPC mobs? To be honest, I don't even know if we were fighting NPC's or PC's? Or even why we were fighting?

• Flesh out The Catacombs. The content doesn't quite seem to do justice to the scale and awesomeness of the environment. Add a boss or two, wandering monsters, more booby traps and maybe some kind of treasure? I did the Monk and Necromancer quests as well as just wandering through and I really like the area, I just wish there was more in it. I think the Catacombs would be an outstanding area to show off the capabilities of the scalable instance, there could be an entire day's worth of content there and I don't think I would get bored with it. Maybe a good place to expand my first point about the impending cataclysm.

• Some kind of training completion reward. This might be there already and I didn't get it? I think the flute would be cool. Put a long cool down timer on it and some cool ability like hypnotizing all adjacent monsters for x seconds. Some item that we take with us from Ascalon that is useful enough to keep with us into the rest of missions and quests.

• I kinda like the short cinematics at the end of the missions that I have played but I would really like to see The Searing done as a full-featured, mind-blowing, jaw agape masterpiece. Something I would rewind over and over again Massive destruction always makes for an incredible cinematic opportunity.

All in all, probably my favorite beta weekend to date With the core part of the game that I have already seen, I can only dream about what Arenanet is gonna be able to add or perhaps what they have left behind the curtain

I created a number of characters over the weekend. I entered the academy 4 times...each time there were chars on the other team whose names I recognized but my team lost every time...with 1 confusing exception. One time my team red won but then it said we were defeated and had to do the closing mission before the searing - not sure but I think everyone loses the academy PvP.
This was my first GW beta and I thougght it was excellent...enjoyed it so much that my first char was almost lvl 8 before i joined the academy...had a fun time hunting ice elementals in the mountains, and even found an Oak Heart that I think is the very large cousin of the Acorn Seed monster. I was intrigued by the post searing missions, tho I crashed once, my computer does do that occasionally, and had to start from the first searing mission. I came to fear the first Prince Rurik mission cause the Prince tended to stand around alot and was either hard to get to continue the mission...or hard to keep up to.; we lost him once and found out he is hard to kill and stopped healing him.
There is so much in the Green Ascalon that the lvl for the academy should be pushed up to 5 or 6 so that people dont miss out on it. the catacombs were good though i first entered it through the green hills(?) side and was confused. I thought the quest for monk as second profession was the hardest and never did keep the monk trainer alive.
All in all a very enjoyable weekend, where I did nothing but play the game and eat once or twice. Looking forward to the March event.

The Belt. that carries 5 items, between the backpack and bags...

And your second class abilities. Those are pretty good early mission bonuses. And with no way to transfer your items to your other characters... Its Very hard to come by a belt. You have to get someone without one to pick one characters belt up and trust to give it back to you in your other character...

This game REALLY needs some account mule function for giving things to your other characters on the same account...
Like in the guild area. something like a guild treasury to keep things for you. Give the guild hall a useful purpose.

Ingram of Haz
=HT=Ingram www.hazteam.net

Aaaawwwwh, I missed that one completely! I thought you could only get a pouch if trading five worn belts to the guy just outside the catacomb area. Of course I coukld not find one belt, so i skipped that quest.

And with regard to entering the Academy: I was confused too, but we won and were zoned out.

However, with the next char i built, i planned to lose (wel, depends on the other 3 persons) to see what should happen. Surprisingly, there was no pvp but I zoned directly to the short cooperative walk...
This second char was a wa/ne and I hda difficulties finding the second warr skill trainer. Any1 did find him? What were the skills you received?