Good thing I reserved thsi at Gamestop.....

Because I can get my money back.

I was very excited to hear that an MMORPG was coming out that was using battle.net. So excited, that I had to get my hands on beta. So I did. I installed it immediately and was eager to start playing. Uh oh. I have to wait? Why?

And that's my question. Why? I got my hands on a copy of beta only to find that I am only allowed to play on certain weekends, with the release date only two months away.

I wanna play now, not March 18th.

*Expects angry forummers to yell and throw things*

I still expect to buy it when it's released, but I've heard bad things about the game and I wanna find out for myself.

ANet believes that it's current beta system is the best for Guild Wars. It may not be the news that us GW fanpeople wish to hear, but it's something that we have all had to deal with since the system was announced late last summer. Did you not read or know when pre-ordering the game that you would only be able to play one weekend a month until release? Also, what bad things have you heard about the game?

I'm curious, what bad things have you heard about the game? Perhaps we can assuage you fears and convince you to stay for the next BWE.

Harvey

The one thing I remember hearing is the overworld. Apparently it plays a lot like Final Fantasy X, in that it's a point and click scenario, instead of an actual world to explore.

No. I expected it to be like any other MMORPG beta I've seen. EQ2, Matrix Online, yeah, the betas were constant. MXO even has a radio station where DJ's play requests in a chat room.

Well, that's kinda true. Instead of a persistant world like traditional online RPG's Guild Wars allows you to instantly travel to certain locations. However, all of the area in-between the various points is still explorable and, according to ANet, they will be full of content. The instanced style of these areas means that you won't be able to just randomly stumble across others (you need to form a party and enter an explorable area togeather), but the world is very much still there to explore. I personally have explored a lot of the game world, and I think it's great even though ANet says they're still working on adding a lot more content. That's interesting. Everything I've seen on sites for pre-orders (honestly I haven't checked gamestop, however) and even the official Guild Wars site mentions the beta events are one weekend a month.

Ironically enough, I work at Gamestop. I didn't bother to check that kind of stuff, I was just anxious to play it. Guess I should've. I would be just as pissed though, either way.

I can sympathize with not wanting to wait. I mean, its 5 AM and I'm here reading and posting becuase I wish I could play. As something of a carrot on a stick, though, my understanding is that if you can get yourself into the alpha testing (are they still calling it that?) you can play all the time.

Now that I didn't know (as well as a lot apparently )

I guess I'll stick to Starcraft for now. My co-workers are ADDICTED to World of Warcraft , and they want me to play it. But, I gotta check this out.

Which is literally impossible

I suggest you read the comments on MMORPG.com, as they are probably less biased than those on a fansite forum . As you will notice, Guild Wars is the #1 anticipated game and the overwhelming majority of comments are positive:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/setView/hype/gameID/82

I would have t oargue it is the #1 most anticipated game because it has been floating around for so long and many games have already been released: WoW, HL 2, Doom 3, etc. Right now I havn't heard about many big name games besides Guild Wars.

Dark and Light hasn't got as much publicising but it's around too