Having crawled into bed last night at 1:30am, after six and a half hours playing Guild Wars 2 and needing to wake at 5:00am, I’d like to think that the stress test was a success.
In comparison to the last beta phase that was plagued with problems; being kicked from servers, an inability to login, getting stuck on loading screens or just generally being plagued by poor performance, I couldn’t believe the difference last night. Going into the stress test, I was half expecting to spend the vast majority of my time staring at the title menu.
Perhaps my merry band of men and I were fortunate to avoid the issues that many appeared to suffer from (the beta forums were awash with technical problems the moment the servers opened) however, I did notice a huge improvement in game performance and encountered no login issues.
The one problem I did face and my colleague Sardu suffered the same, was taking part in Defending Shaemoor more than 3 times and only warping out of the tutorial area after relogging and completing it a fourth time.
This minor inconvenience aside, I was pleasantly surprised. Perhaps the servers had far less people playing this time around (although zones still looked just as busy) and so perhaps could handle the strain better. Either way, it all made for an incredibly enjoyable evening, where 99% of my time was spent in structured PvP.
The elementalist is a profession I’ve never once played (despite being asked to play it many times) but is probably, even after all this time, the biggest surprise I’ve ever had in Guild Wars 2; powerful, mobile, complex and adaptive, it reminds me a great deal of my Druid in World of Warcraft where forms are replaced by attunements. I’m amazed that I’ve never played it before and I’ve thought about playing nothing else since I awoke this morning.
I’m not sure there is anything more satisfying that using Ride The Lightning from the clocktower gantry to land near a control point, using Burning Speed to sprint into the middle of a pack of opposing players, followed by Ring of Fire and Earthquake. It’s simply epic and I can’t wait to take the profession for a test run in World versus World.
So what did you do during the stress test and how did you find it? Did you even take part? Did you try new professions? Do you have withdrawal symptoms already?
Let us know!
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Logged on right at the start to find our Jade Quarry matched up against Moledune and Tarnished Coast. We took Stonemist Keep and held it all day, even if we were close to losing a couple of times. I had some things I wanted to do during the time but quickly found myself starting with WvW and never looked back.
There were a few waves of unbearable lag of 10+ seconds. There were also a few episodes of 5 second lag spikes. Overall, the gameplay seemed to be "better.' I didn't run across my usual video issue of having my screen glitch out until about 30 minutes before the end of the test. It forced a reboot on my end and I would say that was a catastrophic crash. I'm hoping this is still an issue with opimization around the nVidia cards that I read about in the 1st BWE event.
That sounds strange? Did you amend any graphics settings? I've been told having depth of field on can cause such issues...
It physically hurt when they turned off the servers at the end of the stress test.
Yesterday went incredibly smooth as far as I could see, and I once again enjoyed my time in Tyria very much. My first experience with the warrior profession was yesterday, and I was quite impressed with the amount of control over their opponent they get, along with the significant spike damage they have.
Apparently, I've been playing ALL of my characters as so called "melee" (close range fighting) so I had absolutely no difficulty with the warrior profession.
Next up for me will be the guardian, followed by mesmer. (necro, ele, war, and thief done so far)
No Ele?:D
Except for a very brief testing of the Mist Form elite vs falling damage on a character created during the previous BWE I didn't really play ele much during the stress test. Btw, MF doesn't seem to help with gravity poisoning.
During the BWE I played the hell out of a staff ele, and also dabbled with the scepter+focus weapon set. It's hard to say which of those I will ultimately prefer but I think staff has the early lead because of the big AoEs.
I was going to try mesmer or thief but my plans failed due to "Network error" problem at the very start of testing. I reported it and test was done to me ) Unfortunately didn't have time to came back a little later - I heard from various people the game was running near the perfect.
Didn't participate, but I saw that structured PvP wasn't working at all when the servers opened. But everything else was fine.
I believe that's probably due to some connection overflow, but that struck out to me the most during the stress test.
Deadpan snarking isn't.
Tried to do structured PvP, but could not get past the loading screen for Khylo and gave up on it, as I had very limited time. I did a little WvWvW and looked more at traits. Wish I had more time, but it really was at a poor time of day (didn't help that I had to go out on an early anniversary dinner eitherwink) I am hoping the next BWE is soon. If it is within the next few weeks I should be able to dedicate the whole weekend to it.
@DrunknGod
I am using a GTX 280 with no problems like that. Sounds like a memory leak with your particular card/drivers maybe?...
@Archer Avatar
What were your thoughts on the warrior? Did you PvE or PvP or both?
I didn't get in a PvP match during the stress test, so just a little bit of time in the mists checking out utility skill options, and some PvE exploring. The hammer, axe/axe, axe/warhorn, and longbow weapons were definitely my favorite weapon combinations, but the greatsword and shield were ok too. (I did not try out the mace during the short stress test, and wasn't all that impressed with the rifle or sword.)
The profession's capacity to "take control" in a fight was quite impressive to me in the early going, and I suppose that accounts for my very high opinion of the hammer in particular. I only made it to level 10 during the roughly 7 hrs of the stress test (there was some experimenting with a few things on previously created ele and necro characters before checking out the warrior... btw, Mist Form utility skill for the ele may make you "invulnerable" vs opponent attacks, but it does NOT protect against falling damage at all... splat.)
In that time I was able to rampage through most of the early areas of the human lands, and gauge how well the profession did compared to other professions (necro, ele, thief) I've taken through those exact same areas. In brief, it was outstanding. The degree of defense granted by the numerous CC options was fantastic and the damage output was superior. The damage drops with both "range" weapons, but I felt the longbow's AoE, and control options made up for that.
Personally, I not only see myself re-visiting the profession, in a more permanent way, once the game launches, but it could become a favorite for PvP in particular, and for certain regular PvE groups. I think my favorite will be hammer+longbow for the versatility and control, combined with decent AoE and high damage.
The signets and physical utility skills were the ones I experimented with a little bit, and both seem worthy of designing some specific builds around.
As far as the great melee vs range difficulty debate; I've basically been playing all of my characters at close range and I've not had any difficulty in doing so, but I'm also not playing "lazy" either, and I don't assume that just because I'm up close that I should be "allowed" to stay there like I'm pitching a tent.
My first law of GW2 combat is; Enhance your movement while taking away theirs. Out manuever your opponents.
My second law of GW2 combat is: If you're not moving, you're dying.
My third law of GW2 combat is; If you're not able to move... bring friends.
Oh... and I'm using a Nvidia GTX 260 here and did not experience any major difficulty during the BWE or stress test. (i7 quad CPU with 12g of tri channel 1333mhz ram.)
I spent 4 hours in world PvP and it went by so fast! I was having so much fun, I was shocked when my first client crash of the night was really ArenaNet shutting down the servers at 6pm.
I can't wait for launch!
The one thing I did notice from this stress test was a change in how people approached their builds. Many I've come across before stacked all power and precision, playing as powerful glass cannons but I saw so many this time around that did the opposite and stacked vitality and toughness.
As someone who tries to find balanced builds, it was an absolute nightmare. Half the players I came across I couldn't damage in the slightest and they would undoubtedly kill me if I didn't try to run.
I only got to play for a couple of hours and because i was 'on the clock' I found it hard to pick something to do. There just wasn't enough time to enjoy just 'playing'.
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