This post is a continuation from Gamescom 2011: Thursday, more PvP and parties.

Pink Moa!

Friday can be summed up in a single word: queues.  If Thursday was busy, Friday was heaving.  My group parted ways as soon as we got into the convention, Zeflakey and TeamFuzzock heading off to get on Diablo 3, while Jareth, his girlfriend and I queued up for Guild Wars 2.  I could tell it was going to be a long wait when we started.  About half an hour in, Zeflakey and TeamFuzzock came back to the ArenaNet stand and told us they weren’t going to get to play Diablo 3 – Blizzard had  stopped letting people get in the queue which was at a 4 to 5 hour wait.In the end it took me that long to get on to Guild Wars 2.  While waiting I got to watch the Lore Q&A and other people playing the demo.  My two highlights can be seen to the left: a candy floss pink moa bird, and a clown inspired charr.  Love the character customisation options people!  Beautiful, ugly and ridiculous.

Lawl charr

Jareth’s girlfriend was the first amongst our group to get on and I waited for my turn watching her play a human elementalist with interest.  She’s not a “gamer”.  She’d come along because Jareth wanted to come (he’s a friend of mine from my university days and was the one who introduced me to Guild Wars) and have a bit of fun on holiday.  Her previous experience with MMOs was 20 minutes on World of Warcraft which she found extremely frustrating – she hasn’t even played Guild Wars and 95% of her limited gaming experience is on the DS.

She had maybe 3 minutes of instructions from Jareth on the bare basics – how to move, attack etc and then she was off.  A few things struck me during her play time.  Firstly how the human starter area has changed since I played the demo last year.  Gone are the cowering villagers which are replaced with a single instruction to go to the inn, a good move in my eyes which stops the “kill ten rats” feel.  Second was the new method of learning skills where new skills are unlocked the more you use the ones you currently have.  Her second skill unlocked around 5 minutes after she loaded up her character (I’ve been informed its 10 uses).  Her third skill unlocked around 15 minutes later.

Mmmm Pie...

I’ve heard some comment that this process is too slow, but I was talking about her experiences with the game later in the day over lunch and Molly told me she found the pacing perfect.  “I’m not used to this kind of game, any faster and I would have felt overwhelmed” she told me.  What also struck me was how quickly she picked everything up.  “Yeah I was quite surprised at that too, but everything felt so natural. It was intuitive.”  She helped around one of the farms, putting out fires and feeding cows, cleared around the dam and rounded off her game time with a trip to a nearby orchard and collecting apples for pies.  Queensdale is beautiful, although I’m a little disappointed that the event with wurms in a field has been replaced by oozes in a field.  I liked the nod to pre-searing.

When my turn came on the demo and I’d finished taking the pictures for Tigerfeet (who has done an awesome job of putting the pictures to use), I rolled an asuran thief which is one of the classes I’m interested in playing at launch.  I was anxious to play a mid level area having played the starter areas previously, and not play in an area that others had.  I’d had plenty of opportunity to watch people playing on the beach area while waiting, so mapped to an area in the south west corner of Sparkfly Fen.  As soon as I landed, I saw an ArenaNet employee nearby who started running away in front of me across the open, swampy terrain.  I followed, curious where they were leading me and another ArenaNet employee joined us.

For the next 20 minutes we fought through random enemies.  I wanted to see how the thief would work in normal combat so I started attacking things that looked mean and hard hitting.  My pistols gave me some really nice skills – Vital Shot (“A shot to the vitals”), Body Shot (“A shot to the body”), Unload (“Unloads your pistols at the target”), Retreating Shot (“Fire a parting shot at your foe, then evade to a safe distance”) and Head Shot (“Daze your foe with a head shot”).

I quickly got into a rhythm, using the first 3 skills to cause damage, using retreating shot when I was taking a bit too much damage, and head shot when the Anet employees were taking a bit too much heat.  My role in the party didn’t feel much different to how I play my ranger in Guild Wars, with options of dealing damage and controlling the enemy.  I never got on with the assassin in Guild Wars at all but although I was squishy the thief has enough options to get out of trouble if needed.

The downsides – stealing items is mostly a gimmick mechanic.  The items you get 90% of the time are not worth the time wasted to obtain them and you’d be better off spending the initiative and shooting stuff.  I found it a bit hard to use my health skill too but I’m guessing that’s mostly because I wasn’t trying to use it right – playing from the comfort of my study it wouldn’t have been an issue.

The area I was in... but in English

I didn’t play around with stealth very much or the other weapons due to time constraints.  While running north west of where I waypointed in, I saw a small passageway which ended up leading to Aleem’s Penance, a closed area with steep hills on either side, lots of trees and stone structures.  We took out a minor boss in the area and celebrated with a session of cheering.  I spotted the entrance to a tunnel that wasn’t marked on the map and went for an explore, my 2 new friends in tow.  We ended up on the shoreline and I jumped into the water, anxious to get a taste of underwater combat before the timer ended.

I wasn’t disappointed.  I’d been looking for beasties and found quaggan who I have a very big soft spot for.  I greeted the one that was nearby, had a bit of a poke around their houses and swam on to find something to beat up.  Underwater combat it turns out is quite hard to control.  Whereas on land it was easy to work out where I was going to go and not over aggro, underwater it was totally different.  I don’t think its a problem with underwater combat, just that its an unusual situation to be in in an MMO and more experience is required to properly control my character underwater.  Noticing I only had a minute left on the clock, I typed a message of thanks and good bye to the developers who had accompanied me and contributed so much to my enjoyment of the game, and left the station to the next happy demo-er.

Unfortunately I was left with more questions.  Aleem was a familiar name but I couldn’t pinpoint where from, so I resolved to find Ree or John before coming home and ask them where the name came from.  The previous night’s dinner had also brought up questions about dungeons relating to guild outings that I wanted to ask.  That would have to wait for Sunday.

I met up with my friends for a late lunch.  Turned out that in my absence, TeamFuzzock had been back to find the Wildstar developer he’d taken a shine to and apologise for the previous night.  In the process, he’d been asked if he’d mind going on camera and giving his “opinion” of Wildstar as “one of the more experienced players of the game”.  Remember me saying he didn’t like the game?  Well you can see him awkwardly reaching for good stuff to say on Youtube here.  Enjoy!

Wildstar at Gamescom