BWE3 - What's Your Story?

I had to work over the 3 days, so I didn't get to play much.

Tooled around with character creation for the new races a lot and came to a final decision on what races/classes I am going to play at launch.

So much to do, so little time....

That is definately the theme of this beta.  I, as I think we can all say, had a blast.

I went into the BWE3 bound and determined NOT to make either Asura or Sylvari, wanting to save those two areas for release.  Well, by the time character creation came up, I had decided to make an Asura, since I didn't really care for them and knew I wasn't going to play one in release, so it wouldn't matter.

That was my first error.  The animations of the Asura are cute beyond compare.  I'm Diabetic and I think I needed to take twice the normal amount of insulin this weekend all because of the sacriny sweet Asura.  (Not realy...just jokeing :))

Next I decided to try the warrior class.  I never cared for Warriors, but I figured it was probably the easiest to get to work on the move or die style of combat since their mechanic is just hitting F1 when the bar fills.

This was my second mistake.  Its not just the great sword...its any of the two handed melee weapons.  The way they sling them over their shoulder when they start to run....its hysterical.  Add in the fact they bounce when the fall from a high place, the way their ears and arms flap when in an all out run, the motorboating wake effect that seems to be caused by their ears when swimming over the surface of the water, how their /laugh emote causes them to litteral fall down laughing....the list just goes on!

Anet WAYYYYYY! over did their cute factor.  Alas...I have fallen in love with the adorable little guys and an Asura Warrior will be one of my mains.

Damn you ArenaNet!!!  Why did you have to make them so unresistable!!!!!

Galen

I loved the Asura's they were a blast as was their story and starting area. My lil guardian was one bad lil' head banger.I am definitely rolling oneof these guys and I am still up in the air about guard or warrior. I was not as enamored with the whole Sylvan area as many were. I still have to play more of it to get a definitive feel. 

I finally rolled a Charr Engineer and had the most fun yet with him. I was rolling over when I finally was able to find a rifle to equip and used power shot. It blasted him back 5 feet and knocked him down rotfl. I really want to see this animation with an Asura Eng. I have yet to try a Necro or a thief and the little I did play with a Ele was actually fun. I am not much for ranged in cast types but sadly,my lil' Asura guard could get nowhere near the doors of keeps without getting sizzled with hot oil. I am still trying to figure out how I was standing under a covered extension pounding the door and hot oil was pouring allover me. It should have set their stinking keep aflame. 

I honestly do not think I have had this much in a MMO in years. I can only imagine how much better it gets and I think Anet has hit an absolute home run. This is a far better example of next gen, new dawn MMO goodness than we have seen in 7 years. Occasionally I will suffer going to MMORPG.com for a good laugh. Some of the complaints I just don't get like people saying it was grindy. There is no way they played the same game I did I think to myself, however, to each their own. This game feels less of a grind than any other MMO I have ever played and I have played almost all of them since their inception.

I really like the Norn starting area and the race but they seemed much slower moving than they did last BWE. It may just be me however but I felt like I was running a Troll from DAOC allover again. maybe if you slim them down all the way they move quicker? Just a thought I suppose.

I don't much care for the human area at all and the Black Citadel just blew me away. I spent 2 hours in that place searching everything and still could not figure out how to get to 2 spots to complete it. All in all I feel very confident that my money exceeds the well spent aspect considering Diablo 3 was a waste and a mess.

I wish it was launch day now....

Tried out Asura and Sylvari areas and enjoyed both.  Asura definitely have some funny events.  Spent a lot of time running around in PvE with a Charr engineer, with a few friends and had an absolute blast in some of the areas beyond the Charr starter area.  I gained a new love for engineer, which cemented its placement in my launch lineup.  Run & Gun with Rifle and grenades was a blast.  I unlocked the 3rd tier of utilities but wasn't able to get any of them before the final event started.

I also did some Ranger Bug testing with pets and traits.

Hunger Royal was a fun idea plagued by poor execution.  The map was much too large (or they needed to adjust spawn points).  I was almost out of health by the time I got to the fighting from my spawn point.

I first created an asuran necromancer, and fell in love with it. I did a good chunk of the personal story with people I just randomly met at some point, went to WvW together with a guardian (Which is a fast way to get them killed, especially with my strategies. Ten enemies, two of us? Sneak close, kill one and RUN!), fought off a atleast twenty krait attacking an island with some guaggans in it, killed the two players that attacked us while we were fighting them and finally manage to claim the island and the guaggan for us. We then proceeded to kill a few caravans, poked a few zergs and spent a lot of time running around with about twenty people chasing us. For the record, leaving behind marks while using locust swarm to run helps a lot, as well as going underwater. For some reason that seems to confuse them.

After we were done with WvW, I went to do some structured PvP. I ran a heavily condition focused build and slaughtered everything. After hulk smashing my way through a few games I was confident that necromancer was the best profession after all, but I decided to give thief a try anyway, since it was my favorite during the first BWE.

I fist created a flexible, mobility based sword/pistol build and fell in love with it. I was uncatchable, I did amazing damage and it really felt a lot better in my hands than the necromancer ever did. Soon afterwards I decided to give a more supportish approach a try. To avoid having to make the builds again and again I simply made another thief and gave it a support venom build. I used Dagger / pistol + short bow, the trait that shares all my venoms with nearby allies and smoke bomb for stealth rezzing. I traited mostly for defence, but I made sure I had decent condition damage as well.

Much to my surprize I liked this build even more than the first one I made. I had a lot more flexibility with my new support abilities, my more defensive approach made me a lot more survivable and made soloing NPCs a lot easier, and I still had enough damage to win any 1v1 I had. I found myself using Cloak and Dagger and following up with the pistol stealth skill and watching the health drop with 15 bleeds on the enemy. Simply put, I never actually used the necromancer again after making my two thieves.

Oh, and the hunger royale was fun as well. I survived until only 25 of our side remained, and I killed about 5 or 7 before going down myself. The map was a bit too large, though.