Saturday morning I played quite a bit. In fact, I played for the majority of Saturday, except where I took a break to watch some t.v. Last weekend was the final weekend of doing nothing for the next month and a half. Oregon this weekend (Labor Day), Wisconsin next weekend (Sept. 8th), bachelorette party the weekend (Sept. 15th) after [Luke is fishing], Luke's bachelor party is the weekend after that so I'll get a little break but I have two hair appointments (Sept. 22), the weekend after that we're gaming it up on Friday and having people crash at our place so we can go to the RenFest the next day (Sept. 29th), and then the weekend after that is the wedding (Oct. 5th).
Holy shit, we're busy.
With the prospect of all that going down in the next month or so, we did nothing this weekend. Well, Luke fished on Saturday, but we did nothing yesterday. I played Guild Wars 2 just about all day Saturday and Sunday, and we started in on another t.v. show, Breaking Bad.
Guild Wars 2 is pretty friggin' awesome. The leveling system is very unique. I've never seen it in an MMO before. There is your main "story" or quest line that you're involved in, but otherwise, you're running around the current area doing these other ... tasks. They're not exactly quests. You go to an area on the map where there's a little gold heart, but it's not filled in. Looks like this:
Those little hearts are, essentially, quests. You go there and you've got 3-5 tasks you can do to complete the heart, and it'll fill in to be a solid gold heart. You can do any of the tasks to fill up the bar to complete the heart. You can leave and come back and finish it later. Completely up to you. But they give you major exp.
There are also a few other things on the map that are part of the leveling experience. Points of Interest are little squares that, when you visit them for the first time, will give you exp. There are also Vistas, which are typically areas up high that you have to jump to get to. For those that played World of Warcraft, remember when people used to try to ninja in to Mount Hyjal from Winterspring and Blizzard didn't like that very much? Yeah, well, the Vistas in Guild Wars 2 are exactly that except NCSoft WANTS you to do them. Like, they want you to go jumping all around to get up to these super high places. It was fun the first 20 times I did this, but there were a few in the most recent zone I finished that were an absolute test in patience and anger management.
And then there are Waypoints. They're exactly what they sound like. Once you've visited one for the first time, you'll always be able to teleport to that waypoint for a small fee (like less than 50 copper a pop). And they're all over the place. Each zone can have between 5 and 20 waypoints, depending on the size of the zone.
I made a few characters, but the one I'm playing regularly at the moment is the Norn Ranger. They get a pet and they use an assortment of ranged weapons (short bows, longbows) and some melee weapons, swords, daggers, a few others.
The combat system is completely unique. Rangers, unlike WoW, cannot have both a melee weapon and a range weapon equipped at the same time. It's one or the other. Ranged weapons have a certain set of skills that can be used, melee weapons a different set entirely. When wielding a bow, it takes up both hands so you don't get an off-hand weapon. But if you were to wield a 1-handed sword, you get to wield something in your off-hand.
The ability bar looks like this:
Down at the bottom, there, is the skill bar. This Ranger is wielding what looks like a throwing Axe in his main hand. So his first 3 skills are based on that. He appears to have an item equipped in his off-hand but because he hasn't used the skills he's got enough times, he doesn't have access to them yet. You start off with only button 1 being available, but if you used it about ten times, then you have access to button 2. It takes more uses to gain access to the buttons 1-5 as you go along, but if you use the same weapon often enough, it does not take that long at all. Buttons 6-9 and 0 are utility buttons and you gain access to them as you level up.
So with the Throwing Axe, this Ranger has a specific set of skills. Were he to change to a Short Bow, they would be different. A longbow also has a different set of skills. Same goes for the various types of off-hands. Buttons 4 and 5 change depending on what off-hand you're using (if you're only using a 1-handed main weapon, allowing room for an off-hand weapon).
There's one more thing on the map that I didn't mention earlier because it wouldn't have made much sense then but I'll tie it in here. You gain your utility skills by not only leveling, but completing Skill Challenges. Skill Challenges are marked on your map by a blue arrow. Once completed, just like the heart, the blue arrow will fill up, and you'll get a Skill point. The skills window is a downwards progression tree. You have to pick 5 different skills to advanced to the next tier. To start you have two rows to use skill points in, and then you have to meet level requirements to get to the next tier.
This guy isn't a ranger, but you get the idea. The first line is the healing abilities. Every single class has three healing spells, one they get for free and then two more they can put points in to.
The next two rows the character has access to once they obtain a skill point. This doesn't show the whole tree, but you can see the first tier is available right away. The second tier will become available at level 10, I think. But you have to first pick 5 different skills to advance to the next tier as well.
Once you've picked 5 skills, and you meet level requirements, you can start picking from the next tier. Same thing for the tier after that, you have to pick 5 in this tier, and meet a level requirement (which I think is 20 at that point). The additional buttons on the side there unlock at levels 10, 20, and 30.
Then there's traits. Traits are like talents on crack. They're awesome. Here's a trait window:
You get trait points simply by leveling. When you put points in to the tree, you'll unlock things at 5 point intervals. And the larger hexagons can have a different talent put in it that you select from an array. Pretty friggin' sweet. It looks like you can change them up whenever you want, too, but I'll have to test that when I get home.
And that's about it for combat and leveling. Character creation is pretty sweet too, you can customize everything. You can change the dye on your armor whenever you want. And there are crafting professions too, although I haven't really played with mine yet.
Game is pretty epic and I've enjoyed it thus far. I'm already level 25, but I won't be playing much in the near future. Once the wedding is past, I'll probably play a bit more.
Guild Wars 2: 10/10
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