Getting Feedback

I began by asking my followers on Twitter about their experiences, but was soon overwhelmed by the number I was receiving. I then decided to set up a form on my blog through which people could email me their experiences in a more measured way. I also included feedback solicited by another on the fansite Guild Wars 2 Guru. I felt this was important for getting a fuller picture of how people viewed their experiences on other servers that my followers and readers couldn’t reach, and also to see if people would respond differently if they knew the feedback wouldn’t be going directly to me.

In order to get the maximum benefit from the data, I’ve taken a somewhat scientific approach to collecting, analysing and reporting, but am mindful that this is a blog post meeting a research paper, rather than a research paper.  For the sake of openness and fairness I have included every response I received directly, even where I felt that a response was likely to be a deliberate troll (with the exception of one which was someone asking me a question unrelated to this research). I have highlighted where I know the same person has responded on more than one channel and discounted this duplicate feedback from statistical analysis I’ve also removed all identifying remarks in comments including guild names and tags, and fansite names. Where feedback was provided on other sites, I’ve included posts that were direct replies to the original poster. I have not included my own feedback on my own encounters or those of people I was directly in contact with over the weekend.

If you’d like to read the original responses (and I recommend you do, they’re very insightful), there is a pdf of all the responses received (listed in the order they were received, and by server), and some statistical analysis of them. I will refer to specific items of feedback below but if you don’t want to wade through the responses then don’t feel like you’ll really lose out.

Huge thank you to Lady Gallo and Sevenforce for looking over the pdf and offering their feedback!

Making sense of it all

It should be noted that 121 responses of members of 42 of the 48 servers were recorded. This generated a mean of 2.52 responses per server. Considering each server has a population of hundreds, there is no way that the data gathered can be considered a large enough sample to give a fair and accurate representation of every server in the beta. This can be evidenced by very conflicting depictions of player experiences on the same server (for example, feedback ids 2 & 4, 39 & 42).  However since this is likely to be the only place that people’s impressions and experiences of the beta will be shared with the wider community I consider the feedback worth distributing to help people make informed decisions in later beta weekends and on release.

The most responses for a single server were from Eternal Grove (17 responses). This may be because Eternal Grove was the server chosen by the English speaking Guild Wars 2 fansite and bloggers, and many of those people follow my Twitter feed. They’re also active participants in the community and so would have been more likely to come across my pleas for help on one of the channels I was looking for and more likely to respond.

Through reading the various comments across all sources, it is clear that problems with the overflow shard technology had a significant impact on the enjoyment of players over the weekend as it prevented guilds and friends from playing together (feedback id 27, 38). This is a sign of a high population in the same area, and possibly a sign of highly populated servers which is something that was highlighted in Mike O’Brien’s latest blog post. Some of the feedback indicated that by Saturday servers were filling up, meaning that guilds and friends got separated across the divides. ArenaNet have already indicated their intentions to improve how overflow shards function, but perhaps a further improvement would be to indicate how many available places there are remaining on a server to help communities decide if there is enough room for them on one.

Other server issues that were mentioned in feedback fairly frequently included lag (it was not clear if this actually meant lag or fps drop) and server downtime. This is to be expected during the first very large scale beta test and has no direct relationship on the nature of the communities on servers.

Respondents on my blog were asked if they would have preferred their server to be quieter, busier or as it was.  Across all the servers, 60% were happy with how busy their server was, while 21.7% would have liked their servers quieter and 17.4% would have liked them busier. This may indicate that a few more servers would have been preferable to allow players to spread out a little more, but the sample size make this hard to say for sure.

Another reoccurring theme amongst feedback is the lack of written communication between players besides general niceties. This seemed to frustrate some players (feedback id 5, 36, 51) who also indicated they were dissatisfied with their choice of server. However this phenomena was not limited to one server or to one continent.  The lack of written communication did appear to be offset by feedback of unwritten communication between players, for example people playing cooperatively or ressurecting others with neither party communicating in writing.

This may be explained in a number of ways. Players could be too busy trying to make the most of their brief time with the game to stop and communicate with others. The non-permanent nature of beta events could make the effort required to make friends seem pointless. Or, it could be that the game doesn’t require written communication because barriers between players have been removed. Body language, for want of a better phrase, may have become the primary means of communication between players.

Some commented that the amount of written communication increased significantly during the last few hours of the beta weekend. This could be because people had grown familiar with each other, or that focus had shifted from exploration to anticipating or experiencing the beta finale content. Lack of clear data in this are means that reasons for silence probably won’t be resolved clearly until the game is launched.

It also becomes apparent that this non-written communication doesn’t equate to a rude or uncaring server community (feedback id 20). People noted that they were resurrected by passing strangers who asked for nothing in return, and that people who were resurrected frequently thanked the person who had helped them. There was also one particular story (feedback id 73) where the player had gotten lost in an area that contained content that was too high for their character, and strangers of an appropriate level helped them get back to the right area with level appropriate content. These small exchanges of symbolic gestures often make a large difference in a community and are an encouraging sign.

Some commented that questions asked about the game were answered courteously. Conversely, there were relatively few mentions of especially unpleasant or rude language or behaviour. The feedback gives the impression that, on the whole, Guild Wars 2 servers contain quiet but informed and welcoming players, who were happy to silently and naturally assist or group with players in PvE whilst achieving whatever goals they were aiming for.

This is backed by 80% of blog respondents saying they were satisfied with their choice of server. Reasons for dissatisfaction included picking a server on the other continent (ie being in the US and picking an EU server), wanting a busier or quieter server. The only server that had more than one respondent dissatisfied with it was Ehmry Bay – one person commented that the server was too busy for their liking, while the other found it too quiet. As previously stated it is hard to draw concrete conclusions from the varied experiences people had on these servers, combined with differing expectations and preferences between players.

It is expected that the number of servers at launch will not be the same as the number of servers during the first beta weekend (due to the rising popularity of Guild Wars 2) and that server makeup will change as communities seek to find their ideal activity level. In addition the newer players may have a very different attitude to those who are currently playing on these servers (see the Eternal September effect).

As a result, it is not advised that community leaders use this feedback to decide which home servers to use during the next beta weekend (if a choice is offered) or at release. Rather, it is hoped that this feedback will help leaders decide if their selection criteria should be changed to find a server that would be of benefit to their community (in other words, deciding if the grass really is greener).

I would have liked to have compared the feedback between servers containing the larger generic communities, generic gaming communities and Guild Wars 2 centred communities, but was unable to find the list of who was going where when it came time to do the report. If you have a list of which communities were going on which servers, please contact me on my About Page and I’ll add that comparison.

Hopefully someone will find this useful!

I’d like you to fill in the form below with your experiences of your server this weekend. Try not to think about any problems you had with Guild Wars 2 except where you think your server would have made a difference. I’ll be collating all the information gathered from this and other sources and posting the results later this week. Share the link around please!

Thank you!

Edit: I’ve had an amazing response so far, but would still love to hear from everyone. If you know someone who was on one of the following servers, please ask them to send in some information: Maguuma, Fort Aspenwood, Blacktide, Vabbi, Ruins of Surmia, Augury Rock.

Further Edit: Nearly a week has passed since I opened this form and I’m now in the process of collating and analysing the results. Thank you to everyone who put forward their information.

One of the streams will hosted by myself and the other will be hosted by Somnium. We’ll start streaming at 6:30pm UTC on Friday 27th April (about 30 minutes before the beta starts) and aim to be broadcasting for over 16 hours each over the weekend. Follow our twitter account, or even better favourite our streams to get alerts when we’re online.

We’ll be aiming to take in as much of the game as possible – PvP, WvW, PvE and more. Expect exploration, delight, and clumsy misadventures as over 25 of our guild take their first steps in the new Tyria together. You’ll hear our conversations (and occasional singing) on ventrilo, with guests from throughout the Guild Wars 2 community. Here’s a quick review of the last month’s streaming activity and some of our favourite moments from the last 6 years.

We want you to share in our fun!

Stream 1: http://www.twitch.tv/mystic_spiral

Stream 2: http://www.twitch.tv/somn1um

Firstly a disclaimer – the responses here are paraphrased. I didn’t have my dictaphone out and while the jist is accurate, the exact wording is not.

When do you expect we’ll be able to see the sylvari and asura areas? 

This question was answered in the Q and A by Eric Flannum who said:

The different races, like the sylvari and the asura? We basically haven’t talked about what content we’ll have in future beta events. We do plan on expanding the content that’s available in future beta events. What we have to do is to sort of draw a line of revealing too much so that things are spoiled to people alongside trying to get more people testing various areas. We have some kind of a [team with] core testers that have access to the entire game so there’s a lot of testing going on for the game. And these beta events where we invited tons of people are more for stress testing and getting a lot of people on the areas. So we do want to keep things fresh and keep expanding the content that’s available on beta weekends, but at the same time we don’t want to get away too much, so I’m not sure exactly how we’re going to go with that. You may see additional races available, and you may not. I think there are lots of distinctions that have to be made, and we’ll be announcing those before each particular events, all the new things that are going to be available on these events, so you guys will have some warning if the sylvari and the asura become playable in the future.

Will there be an edition of the game (not necessarily prepurchase) that comes with a DVD of the game on it? If not, what advise do you have for those with slow connections or low bandwidth caps?

Aidan told me that the standard prepurchase edition does not come with any sort of DVD. The second of the Collectors Edition boxes (the one you get around launch with the statue and other bits in) does have a DVD, but the first one that will be purchasable on the 10th April does not. Pre-order and post release copies will. As for those with slow connections and low bandwidth, he said he’d had a lot of questions and feedback about that, and he was going to feed it up the chain to see what could be done.

Will the digital deluxe items be offered in the cash shop at a later date?

Stephane told me that this question will be answered at a later date.

Since the fan day though, it’s come out that if you purchase the standard edition of the game you’ll be able to upgrade to the digital deluxe at a later date.

We haven’t seen anything of activities in the demos. Are they still intending to be in the game at launch?

Stephane told me that as the world is alive, sometimes the activities are open and sometimes they’re closed but he wasn’t aware of them being disabled. There will be more information on them later.

 Any news about the development of a spectator mode for Structured PvP?

Some of this was covered in the Q and A, but before that had happened I spoke to Matthew about this. He told me they’re looking at how best to approach observer mode – for example doing it live is a problem because of possible cheating. I made the case for downloadable games as a boon for shoutcasting and that was that.

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 A few other questions that popped up on twitter about my experiences playing…

How did you find the dodge mechanics in play? Easy to get to grips with? @WeekendJedi

The dodge mechanics were good and made sense in terms the combat but weren’t a free win. Some enemy aoe were too big to dodge roll once out of, you had to do it twice and quickly. In terms of double tapping, it was fairly natural. But my judgement on this has to be balanced with the fact I’ve played Guild Wars 2 twice before and was happily dodge rolling at gamescom 2011. Either way, if you remember that you can do it, it’s easy to get used to.

Did you feel any of the “skating” feeling when strafing with your characters? It was especially annoying in older builds. @AlexiousITA

None I noticed, but I wasn’t looking for it. I guess the fact I didn’t notice is good?

How do you feel about dynamic events scaling with many players around? Some have said that it tends to be too easy. @AlexiousITA

How was scaling with 26 people? @DistilledWill

All events seemed to cope well with naturally forming groups of 1-8 players. For the most part we were all fairly close together and more enemies spawned or the fight got tougher appropriately. Some events seem to be designed for more than one person (and aren’t marked as group events) and I think they will scale better upwards than those which are aimed at solo play. It’s fair to say the game isn’t 100% balanced or finalised. The group of 26 players beating on a single mob is an artificial scenario I don’t think will ever happen naturally amongst strangers in the game. As soon as the mob we’d been directed at fell, people headed in different directions looking for new challenges in smaller groups.

That said, it’s undeniable that the first couple of weeks in the game risk feeling like a cakewalk because of the number of new characters in the starter zones. However with ever server’s population divided into 5 and the presence of overflow shards, I think things will calm down very quickly into feeling quite natural. If people want to make groups of 15 or more players and zerg through the maps then that’s fair enough, but I don’t think those same people should complain about the content being easy. If you’re seeking a challenge, I’d suggest go for smaller groups (up to 6 or 7 is plenty) or mobs that are higher level than you. Sidekicking down only does so much as you will still have more utility skills and trait points later in the game.

How did you find the character builder? @WeekendJedi

It had come on a lot since I took the pictures for Tigerfeet last year. Eye colour was in (squee) and there were a lot of new faces and hair styles I hadn’t seen before. Because we only had limited time and this was a temporary server I didn’t focus on making my characters perfect, just removing the bits that would annoy me. My norn looked like a Barbie who’d been taking steroids and taken a trip to the tattoo parlour, my human had a slight resemblance to Emilia Clarke in her role as Daenerys Targaryen, and my charr was a sandy colour. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more options in the works, but what is there is adequate in terms of options by my standards and more realistically executed than many MMOs.

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Before the first press beta weekend, I posted an entry outlining what I hoped to find out about Guild Wars 2 then. Some of the points never got addressed or were things I could never hope to know until I got my paws on the game. Now I’ve had a little time with the game some of the questions have been cleared up.

The Good

I’m excited to see that the mesmer isn’t an entirely pet centric profession in the manner that rangers and necromancers are. Illusions, clones and phantoms behave as you’d expect them to and will be a force to be reckoned with in PvP, while providing lots of options in PvE. Learning when and how to shatter them will be key to the success of the player, as will making the most of conditions.

I already loved the guild system, but seeing the option to customise ranks opens up even more doors. I hope people can be won over with the idea that not penalising guild hopping and not having a hard lock on guilds is not an awful thing. It’s an exciting time to be a guild leader.

As far as providing PvE-ers with things to do long into the game, dungeons are going to challenge on story mode and be excellently hard on explorable.

The Bad

Having to wait weeks until I’m back in this version of Tyria. I tried to dodge roll in Guild Wars 1 the other day. Hmm.

Although it’s rather disappointing not to have been able to get any idea of the scale of WvW but with only 26 people on the server, there was little point going there. It’ll have to wait until the first pre purchase beta weekend.

The Ugly 

The game is definitely still in a beta state. No surprise there. Norn voices need work as they’re comically butch for females. There may be a potential sticking point with the sizes of inventories of starting characters, as my mesmer had relatively few slots and was getting quite a few different items as drops. In the dungeon we got fewer drops but they were of higher quality (Tilion was nice enough to give me a shiny green staff he found too!). I think if you’re trying to collect everything for crafting you may have inventory issues, but it’s hard to judge on a really low level character and without visiting the bank.

It’d be nice to get some kind of feedback on skills as to which are usable under what situations ie what can be used in PvP and what can’t. And I’d rather like a real world time clock to stop alt tabbing. Oh and the use of modifiers in key binds. Please ArenaNet. Pretty please.

So there we go. That’s my as-honest-as-possible account of my time playing Guild Wars 2 and I hope you enjoyed it.

If you’re still unsure about the game, I’d suggest paying close attention to the prepurchase beta weekend where people can stream and post about the game to their heart’s content. And if you’re not convinced after that, wait for the free trials. Guild Wars 2 will not be a game for everyone, because no game is to everyone’s taste. Except maybe solitaire or tetris.

If you have further questions about the game, feel free to drop them in the comments below or tweet me.

Tuesday morning I met with Paeroka, Dutch, Tilion and Kronos for breakfast before heading back to the venue for a few more hours of game play. We were given a choice of taking on the Ascalonian Catacombs dungeon or doing more exploration; nearly everyone in the room jumped at the chance of facing up to the dungeon that we’d seen the press struggle with.

We had to roll charr to get bumped up to the minimum level 30 requirement for the dungeon so I quickly made myself another elementalist, figuring I felt more comfortable and competent with that profession than any other. I didn’t fiddle around with the creation screen very much. This wasn’t the time to make the prettiest kitty in the world as she was likely to spend a lot of her time on fire. I hit the “skip to end” button on character creation and moved on.

A quick word about starter zones in Guild Wars 2. I’ve had the pleasure to play all 3 of the available starter areas and while the human area felt familiar, the charr area was loaded with nostalgia and the norn area felt like new beginnings. Having recently been playing Rift and Aion where the starter areas for either faction feel like skins of each other (ie swap murky area for sparkly one, or tech infested town for a ruin of one), its nice to see the opening blows of a race feeling so different. That is not to say all the starter areas for Guild Wars 2 are unique. They are not. They roughly follow the same formula of “get directions to boss guy, do x, wait at y point until previous group has passed, then fight big boss z”. Frankly, I’ll allow the first 5 minutes of my character’s 120 hour journey to level 80 to have some repetition across all professions of the same race. However, that doesn’t mean that all the areas are identical, especially when it comes to the charr. As part of your character’s setup you choose who in your warband you were closest to, and you see those npcs in the tutorial area helping to fight back the ghosts. I thought it was a nice touch.

So with Barradin beaten back, I warped to the unlocked waypoint next to the dungeons and spoke to an npc who bumped me up to level 30, gave me a load of weapons, new armor, skill points and a book to unlock the first tier of traits. Elites were the most expensive to unlock so I had a look through my options and thought that the racial elite Artillery Barrage would be best for a dollop of aoe damage and control in one. I also picked up Conjure Frost, thinking the skills on the conjured Frost Bow would likely be control or support oriented (it was a little disappointing not to see what skills that would give), Mist Form in case I started getting hit on a lot and Arcane Power to boost my damage output. I picked out the staff as I knew how those skills worked and then sorted out my traits. I can’t honestly remember exactly what I slotted, but I do remember dropping 10 into fire.

After a bit of confusion with teams and working out how to all get in the same instance of the dungeon, I ended up grouped up with Tilion from Dragon Season, Yalu from Guild Wars 2 Journal, 4thVariety from Wartower and Ligia from Mediavida to take on story mode. We didn’t consider which professions we were putting together, or actually how our skills synergised. We just grabbed 5 and went. I won’t spoil the story other than to say that if you have read both books and played Guild Wars 1 it will resonate more strongly with you than someone who has not. However, enough of the background is shared in the cinematics that if you have not you will still understand exactly what has happened and why you are there. The dungeon itself is like no dungeon I have played before in an MMO. The closest I think is either some of Age of Conan or that 3 hours I spend in Dungeons and Dragons before running out of the F2P stuff. There are deadly traps. Enemies come looking for you and there are dynamic events inside the dungeon. You have to think smart and fast to survive, all while fighting mobs that pose a very genuine threat to your group and you have to work together to progress.

The Frost Bow came in handy, not only because it creates another copy of itself that someone else could use, but because the 5th skill freezes foes in place for a few seconds. Using that at the right time saved people, as did throwing up the odd Geyser and Healing Rain. During combat I was constantly trying to balance damage, control and support depending on the health of my teammates and what we were fighting. It turned out that we’d made a group of 1 guardian and 4 elementalists which worked quite well but did not save us from getting downed and completely wiping once (those who say “just take elementalists and you’ll breeze through” are plain wrong). Any comparisons I give to content in Guild Wars 1 will be skewed by people’s experiences of farming builds, but if I had to I’d put it on a par with doing the Underworld or Slaver’s Exile on hard mode with a balanced team and no consumables. It is solid concentration the entire way. Again using the terrain came in handy and especially with the very final boss fight, hiding behind pillars was needed to stop your character taking a dirt nap. We did it though and fairly quickly compared to other groups who had started long before we had and finished a little after.

Gluttons for punishment, we decided to go in for explorable mode, repaired up and went in again. At that point I decided to check the map.

The dungeon is huuuuuge. I knew we’d covered a lot of ground in story mode but really. And when we got to the decision point inside the dungeon and saw marked on the map that we were going to an area that we hadn’t been to before… I think it is safe to say that there is a lot to be done in a single dungeon.

If story mode is tough, explorable mode is the thing that teaches story mode how to be tough. Admittedly we were attempting it at level 30, when I’ve heard various people say you should be level 35 for explorable mode so maybe that isn’t surprising. We didn’t even make it past 2 rooms of enemies before my charr was getting decidedly naked. We took it in turns to go out of the dungeon and repair (I had more than enough to foot the bill several times over) and came back for more. Again there were traps, enemies who came looking for trouble and champions who seemed to be made of stone. Having had only 6 hours on the game rather than the 40 or so we should have had by this point really showed. As did sitting on the opposite sides of the room to each other, where we couldn’t easily converse real time. Typing is not going to be a practical solution in dungeons in Guild Wars 2. Get decent headsets if this is your kind of thing.

Eventually, we made it 5 rooms past the decision point before time ran out and we gave up. What had felt like 45 minutes had actually been closer to 3 hours. Time flies when you’re having fun and getting your butt kicked. I felt exhausted.

Overall, I feel very happy about the dungeon we saw, especially because we couldn’t beat it. Story mode will test you while still being possible and explorable mode will be an extra additional layer of pain over that. Dynamic levelling down to 30-35 will make sure this dungeon is relevant all the way to 80. Yes, there may be a complaint about there “only” being 8 dungeons you can tackle multiple ways, but in my opinion there will be more content to enjoy in the game before a player who can sink 20 hours a week into the game has finished seeing every route. There’s so much of Tyria to see that if you only spend your time tackling dungeons, you’re doing it wrong.

Before wrapping up, I managed to get a few minutes to chat with Matthew Moore about life as a QA tester in the games industry which was very interesting to me, but probably very boring to everyone else out there. I also grabbed a few minutes with Stephane and got the answers to a few more questions – the post with the answers to the various other questions I asked will be out in a few hours.

That done, I headed back to the station and swapped a sunny but chilly Brighton for a rainy Suffolk. When can I go back?

Thank you very much to Aidan, Melanie, Matthew, Stephane and everyone else at ArenaNet and NCSoft that made this event happen. It’s great to see a company support the community in this way and I had a great time.

After being forced out of the room for a break by Stephane and having a chat with Paeroka, Dutch and Tilion about what we’d seen so far, we came back into the basement for a bit of PvP. We could either use our norn characters or roll something new – once players have gone through the opening cinematic they could either jump to the mists or straight into a match from the hero panel of the character. I decided to roll a human elementalist to see how hard it was with a single weapon and 4 attributes and jumped straight into a match. My character was immediately bumped up to 80, provided with max weapons and armor with some basic jewellery, and my skill bar fleshed out with skills including Mist Form and Tornado.

I had entered a match already in progress on the Battle for Kyhlo map. I got a couple of goes at Conquest at gamescom so vaguely knew my way around, which definitely helped. Things were tighter this time around as there was more markings on the environment to show what was going on – for example just by looking in the direction of the mansion point, I could see who was holding it even if my character had no direct line of sight. This made it a lot easier to work out where players should be going next, which points were contested, held or needed to be captured.

The Battle of Kyhlo

PvP in Guild Wars 1 is something I have a love hate relationship with. I love the format of GvG, but hate that it takes so much planning to get to play. ArenaNet have definitely made PvP more accessible in Guild Wars 2 with the hot join aspect and I can definitely say that this would be something I’d break away from PvE or WvW for as a change of pace. Some members of the hardcore PvP community may lament the influx of “nubs” this will create, but in my eyes a constant stream of new players is required to maintain a healthy and competitive PvP scene. Hopefully a good matchmaking algorithm will help keep the experienced and new players apart to stop both groups getting frustrated.

Fighting other players was great. Picking the right fights, dodging and using the terrain added to the skillful aspect of PvP. Using skills on cool down will not help you win the match. Picking the right skill for the right situation will. As an ele  wielding a staff, I was juggling all 4 of my attributes mostly using air and fire skills. If there was a team fight where we were under pressure I could switch to water to add a little healing and damage, slowing enemies to help my allies. I’d use fire to deal a lot of damage when control had been supplied by another player. Air was used to apply a speed buff to allies, knock down enemies and stun them in place, while I used Earth skills to slow them. Sometimes I switched attributes just as the battle changed pace and was unable to switch back, meaning that things would invariably not go the way I wanted them to unless there was backup nearby. At that point I’d use my elite skill Tornado to turn the tide of the game, sometimes it would work sometimes not, but heck it was satisfying sending players scattering!

I can honestly say that a single player had less importance than teamwork in PvP. Having more players than the other team was not an automatic win situation, evidenced by matches where the team with the smaller number of players won. Other matches were incredibly close, with teams that were over 150 points behind coming back to win at the last second (one match ended 500-499). Teams weren’t static either, players switched teams every match which kept things fresh.

While on the Battle for Kyhlo map, I tried the trebuchet for the first time and found it quite challenging due to a lack of feedback. It took quite a while to re-aim it and the length of time the button was held determines how far the projectile goes. There wasn’t a lot of feedback as to where or what had been hit (if anything), and I soon gave up in favour of trying to capture points because I felt I was more use to the team doing that.

Forest of Niflhel

After a match finished we immediately went into another alternating between the Battle for Kyhlo and the Forest of Niflhel maps. The Forest of Niflhel map is amazingly beautiful and lives up to the name, with the map scattered with boulders, trees and stone ruins steeped in mist that obscures the battlefield from above. The two guardians add an extra dynamic to the capture point map, as killing either of them awards a hefty dollop of points to the killing team. It felt easier to get lost on this map because of the scenery (walls were higher than on the other map and the paths were more winding and natural), but the multiple routes to each location screams strategy.

Bear in mind that voice communications were not in use while playing this PvP. I didn’t really know who exactly was on my team and it didn’t matter. People were acting in a similar manner as they do in Alliance Battles in Guild Wars 1, moving from point to point in the way they thought best, helping in fights along the way. There is lots of scope for strategy and teamwork on top of that. I’d count the hot join scenario as a cross between Alliance Battles and the old Team Arena, except with the teams changing every match. If players went in with set team, I’d see the bar for skill being set a lot higher. It’s impossible to say if this is esport material, as those kinds of games seem to live or die on broad appeal, shoutcasting and tournaments, but I’d suggest the first part of that recipe has been fulfilled.

As for playing with an elementalist, the combat was a nice variety of damage and control with a bit of support. It is important to remember what skills are granted to your current weapon on the other attributes so you can switch appropriately and get have the best benefit. If you’re looking for a general all rounder profession, I suggest giving it a go. I only played with a staff and didn’t significantly change my utility skills. I tried equipping the Hounds of Balthazar elite but it was disabled (as expected) and there wasn’t any visual feedback to say what was able to be equipped and what wasn’t.

Q and A

As we left the gaming room in the basement of the venue for the evening to go into the Q and A, we were each given our own ArenaNet zip up hoodies. They are incredibly cosy. Participating in the Q and A was great, and it was nice to hear the responses from the developer’s lips rather than in text. Some of the joking and expression of the words doesn’t translate into the text. I was a bit disappointed to only be able to ask one question as I had 10 or so (other sites had brought 60!), but I’ve managed to get a few other answers from Aidan, Matthew and Stephane over the 2 days which I’ll be posting tomorrow.

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Dinner and the beach

After a brief stop at the hotel, we went to the Italian restaurant for dinner where I had a got to know Tilion a lot better. I’m hoping to work more with Dragon Season in the future, either posting original articles over there or helping out with building their community, but we’ll have to see how much time I have for that. Dutch and I spoke about various aspects of working together for the better of the community when things line up, the start of which we saw yesterday when we split the load for transcribing the Q and A.

In the weekend before the event I’d been talking with Paeroka and others about going down to Brighton beach. The schedule we’d been sent was tight so the only time we’d get to do it was after dinner. Aidan (UK CM) had seen my tweets about the beach and even though he was tired from getting everything ready for us, he graciously escorted around 8 of us down to the beach. Brighton, even at 11pm on a Monday night, was alive with people and it took us only about 10 minutes to wander down to the pebble beach. I was a bit disappointed to see the pier wasn’t lit up but still very excited – I love beaches! We spent a few minutes down there, and then wandered back to the hotel after dropping off a couple of people at a nightclub next to the beach (they managed to show up for the right time the next day too!). I was tempted to join them, but having been up since 5:30am bed was calling. All in all it was a long but excellent day.

This is what Brighton pier looks like at night!

]]> http://www.tashadarke.co.uk/2012/04/eu-fan-day-diary-part-2-pvp-dinner-and-beaches/feed/ 4 http://www.tashadarke.co.uk/2012/04/eu-fan-day-diary-part-1-norn-starter-area/ http://www.tashadarke.co.uk/2012/04/eu-fan-day-diary-part-1-norn-starter-area/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 12:52:34 +0000 Tasha http://www.tashadarke.co.uk/?p=515 So let’s get stuck in with the meat and potatoes of the EU Fan Day. I was really surprised to be invited; after all, I haven’t done a huge amount with the wider community lately as I’ve been concentrating on my guild and studies. But having been invited, I wasn’t about to turn the trip down so quickly booked off a couple of days holiday and prepared to go to Brighton again.

I say again, because this isn’t the first time I’ve been invited to an ArenaNet event in Brighton. I was lucky enough to win a place at the Winter party in 2007. That event was good – I got to meet some people who are still now friends and got a full set of skill pins in one go. However this trip was better, not only because we got to play Guild Wars 2 but because it was longer and larger.

A quick couple of notes to start. I’m going to split up my experiences into a few posts to stop an even larger wall of text than it’s going to be and to keep any questions relevant to the text. Also note that I last played Guild Wars 2 at gamescom 2011 & quite a lot has changed. ArenaNet have kindly changed the extend of the NDA that we signed so everyone who attended now has the same ability to talk about the game as the press. That said, onwards!

It turned out that I was the only Brit invited to the event, so I’m really glad that people spoke English and were friendly! After checking in to the hotel, saying hi to familiar faces (or putting faces to familiar names) and waiting for everyone to arrive we headed down to the venue where the event was taking place. After some small technical hitches (apparently getting 28 machines of sufficient power running in one room hadn’t been done before at this venue), and rifling through the goodybag we’d all been given we sat down to play the game. The goodybag contained a bandanna, a fabric NCSoft drawstring bag, a fabric Guild Wars 2 shoulder bag and a Euro exclusive Guild Wars 2 mouse mat with Rytlock on it. Very cool. No, I won’t share them, but I will add pictures later pictures below!

Mousemat

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Picture 1 of 2

EU exclusive swag!

Saying hello to the norn 

We all started off in the norn starter area, and I rolled a mesmer as that’s what I’m thinking of playing at launch. Having watched lots of videos I knew roughly what to do and very quickly I’d unlocked all 3 of the initial weapons on the sword and got past the tutorial. Quite honestly, the press videos don’t do the world justice or instill the same feeling of accomplishment for completing the early challenges as doing it in person. I picked up a pistol after getting through the tutorial and worked on unlocking those 2 weapons too, helping clear skelk from the Raven shrine and putting eggs back in nests. I decided to follow in the steps of Yogscast and headed down to the Bear shrine to feed the cubs and clear off some graffiti, and then head underwater to find the dredge.

It was at this point that the spontaneous grouping really kicked in. Someone else in the room had come down to the Bear shrine and was filling out their heart. When I jumped in the water, so did they and we set through killing the underwater mobs to get to the dredge. Neither of us said a word to each other; we just followed and helped each other on our way. I still don’t know who it was helping me! I knew I was pushing my luck going to this area, the dredge were 3 levels higher than we were and promptly kicked our butts. Back to the nearest way point I went…

After helping Snow Leopard, I headed down to the Wolf shrine and found a large group assaulting a nearby camp full of Sons of Svanir. I joined in and by this point I was getting the hang of mesmer, creating my clone and illusion and then shattering them as the fights drew to a close. Sometimes I’d use the skills on different targets if more than one enemy had been engaged which kept them busy and off me. This isn’t a class that you can fire and forget your clones/illusions, you really have to pay attention to what’s happening and work out when is the best time to shatter and what type of shatter to use. Likewise you’ll need to use them for most encounters – a chunk of damage comes from them, and they’re good distractions for the AI. I didn’t get to unlock any utility skills, but felt like mesmer would be a profession that you could pick up quickly but would take ages to master.

Heading across the river, I found a couple of friendly norn talking about making the nearby grawl worship the norn as gods, and one of them decided he’d head into the cave to carve a statue of a norn in there. Players were tasked with protecting him and I figured I’d give it a go. Everything was going fine until the cave opened out a bit and I found myself swarmed. After a few more attempts (I could go and res the NPC and continue the event) I gave up, figuring a few more bodies were needed.

At this point I decided to go for a stroll through Hoelbrak, looking for signs of asura and sylvari. Words can not describe the size of the city and especially the Great Lodge, which stretches into the sky in a manner that would seem to defy gravity and makes all norn next to it look like ants. The area outside of it is inhabited by a large number of npcs, including members of the Vigil and the Priory and yes, there are sylvari and asura there. The sylvari I saw was mostly covered up in a coat and mask but what I could see of her was gorgeously eerie and appealing. The asura looked pretty much how you expect. I also found a colourfully ugly looking character of a human who looked like he’d modelled himself on a gnome, and wandered past 2 travelling charr who were moaning that the norn only talk about themselves and take insults with pride.

Stephane then asked all of us to join together and attack a broodmother in the river as an example of scaling. Even with 26 of us pummeling the same enemy, she didn’t fall over. I got to her pretty quickly and could see the rate that we were killing her stayed about constant as more people joined the fight. Frankly though, 26 people attacking something that isn’t a world boss is a bit excessive. Most of the time, people broke up into groups of 3-5, which scaled appropriately. And yes, everyone got xp, gold and karma for finishing the event.

 Impressions 

The norn starter area is gorgeously detailed with nods of things that Guild Wars 1 players will recognise and those that aren’t will accept as part of the world. It’s vibrant, alive and dynamic events (that aren’t hearts) do have a level of persistance. 15 mins after we cleared out the Sons of Svanir, they hadn’t rebuilt their camp. Unfortunately the female norn voices had been altered to the point of being comically butch, and combined with the somewhat idealised character creation was a little disappointing. Beta is beta though.

The mesmer is a very interesting profession to play that I think will take a serious level of understanding and practice to master. My only regret with it is that I didn’t play with other weapon sets or fiddle around with the utility skills. I’m still looking at this being my main when launch rolls around. It’s not a simple pet class in the way that the necro or ranger are.

Before I leave off for this entry, I thought I’d share something else. Somewhere along the way, someone made a guild and invites were spread around. I had a poke around the guild tab a little, and noticed that there’s a rank tab with the option to create new ranks and assign different actions to different ranks. I wasn’t guild leader so I don’t know how many you could make, only that the generic leader-officer-member architecture came as standard. I’m not sure if this is new news or I missed it coming out of the beta, but figured it was worth sharing. I’m really excited to see what structures people come up with.

Feel free to ask questions below, I’ll answer them if I can. I’ll post another entry later with more PvP impressions. You can read the part 2 here.

Attendees from ArenaNet were Eric Flannum (Lead Game Designer), Colin Johanson (Lead Content Designer), Ree Soesbee (Writer and Lore & Continuity Designer), Kristen Perry (Character Artist) and Josh Petrie (Tools Developer). Regina Buenaobra was also there live tweeting. As I don’t know everyone’s tags and it feels wrong to post real names on the internet, I’ve sourced questions according to the fansite. If I get permission later to release the audio I recorded, I will do so. Note that I have tried to be as accurate as possible without including all the “erms” and “ums”, but there may be some inaccuracies. Also the audio was unclear at some points – I’ve indicated where that has occurred.

The community poses questions to ArenaNet

Nerdy Bookahs: How does the overflow shard work? We know we can play PvE, but can we play structured PvP while we’re on the overflow shard and can we join structured PvP matches with friends who are on other servers?

Eric Flannum: So I guess I can take that. Yes you can join structured PvP when you are on the overflow server. People who are on other servers, the matchmaking in structured PvP are between different servers so you will be able to play with people from different servers.

Attached to Keyboard: What is the biggest challenge that you’ve had to face to get the game to its current stage, either programming or just trying to decide what it is that you want to make out of Guild Wars 2?

Josh Petrie: From a programming perspective at this point in the game the biggest challenge we have is optimising everything, making sure it’s all going to run as fast as we can get it on all the hardware we’re going to run it on.

Kristen Perry: From an art point of view its sort of the same thing we’ve been doing all along just making sure everything is as polished and as awesome as we can get it in the time we have going on.

Eric Flannum: I guess design wise balance is kind of the optimisation for us. You know working on creature balance, skill balance, making sure that all the various numbers that we have in the game work actually together and everything is exactly right. That’s always tricky and takes a while, but I think is often the difference between an ok game and a great game.

Ree Soesbee: From a story perspective we now have thousands and thousands and thousands of lines of text in the game written by lots of different people in the company from events to story, dungeons to everything else, and making sure that they’ve all said the same lore can be very difficult because someone will make a small point about a hylek in one map that absolutely has to be carried over everywhere else or it doesn’t make any sense and we have to find that tiny little assumption that somebody made and make sure it’s even throughout the game.

GW2NL: What mechanics do you consider unfinished and will be developed further in the future?

EF: I think just about every feature is eligible to be worked on depending on feedback that we get. So even if there’s something we think is perfect, it’s completely done, if when the game releases we then realise “oh ok well that thing’s not as great as we thought it was” we’ll absolutely work on it. We have a fairly sizable live team that we’re going to dedicate to creating all kinds of stuff after the game ships. One of those teams is kinda just an R & D team to come up with cool new things and to fix things that aren’t as good as they could be. You can expect to see a lot of additions and refinements and all kind of things after the game ships.

GuildMag: Can you tell us anything about the upcoming PvP maps and specifically the underwater PvP map?

EF: Upcoming PvP maps, I think we released a screenshot that showed a little bit of one the other day with the guardians and the warrior, both with hammers. So we’ve for 2 more PvP maps that we haven’t revealed yet, they’re both capture point, one of them… I don’t want to totally give them away ‘cos I think we’re planning on revealing them. One of them is actually going to be pretty nostalgic for GW1 players so you can expect that to be something that has a lot of familiar elements for GW1 players and the second one actually is a pretty cool one that has a lot of underwater combat and involves a pirate ship so those are both pretty cool and we’ll be talking more about those I think pretty soon.

CJ: Guild Wars 1 players are going to be pretty excited I think.

GWOnline/OnlineWelten: Most achievements in an MMOG at least in people’s interests, translate directly into time spent in game. At the same time these achievements have some kind of social value to them. People like to compare their characters, dungeon runs etc. How will micro transactions affect the social dimensions of MMORPG and game play?

EF: Some of the items in the shop that you guys have seen are basically things that can kind of circumvent a bit of time spent in the game and our achievements, if you go back and look at them, are a combination of things that take time as well, but there are also lots of things, I think even the majority of things, that don’t really take time and can’t really be effected by cash shop things. So achievements like killing other player in WvW or for PvP, or achievements for things like finishing dungeons or doing things like that, most of those things really can’t be circumvented or rushed along by using micro transaction and then we’ve got kind of just the way that our achievement score works, it’s kind of just an aggregate score and so there’s no real top limit to it. So when you’re comparing with your friends, you kind of just have this one achievement score that you’re comparing. I don’t think micro transaction, it will have some affect on it, but it won’t be the major determining factor in whether someone has a super high achievement score or not.

CJ: Some of those things too that you show off in game as achievements of stuff that earned, So like if you do explorable dungeons and collect the rare armor sets or rare weapons that come from that dungeon, those are things where you can’t take those items and trade them around with everyone. They’re bound to your character for completing that stuff, so it’s a sense of this is your ability to show off to everybody else “I did this” and people can’t get those abilities from the cash shop. Those are purely things that people playing the game, who are skilled enough to beat the dungeons can earn them and that’s the only way to get them. We think that’s really important too is things like that are achievements that allow you to show off to everybody. Those will stay limited to people who can earn them and the amount you spend will have no effect on those.

DragonSeason: What is your number one thing you are worried might just go wrong?  

(Everyone laughs)

KP: There’s always something to go worry about, it’s just preparing and making sure everything doesn’t go wrong.

RS: Yeah if we thought of something that we’re scared will go wrong, we’ve been trying to address it.

Everyone: Yeah

EF: The big thing is something always goes wrong, I think we learnt that from our previous game releases, so the big thing is to be ready for when that happens and be able to respond to it. But I mean, if there were anything that er, I mean the sort of the “I’m pretty sure this isn’t gonna happen” but you always worry about some progression stopping bug getting through right, like I think we had that with Nightfall where something snuck through, but with a game as big as Guild Wars 2 is, I think you always worry about the you know how can we have possible seen everything that could possibly happen with it. We worry about that. But the big thing is we’re always ready to respond to that. We know that the day we release is not the end day; it’s kind of the beginning. We always have the mindset of we’re ready to respond immediately.

KP: Yeah especially if there’s ever a wardrobe malfunction I need to be on that.

CJ: My biggest fear is that the day the game comes out people will forget to eat and sleep. That is very important. Please remember to sleep and eat. We don’t want to lose any of our community!

KP: Well look at it that way too, that the hallucinations from sleep deprivation will be some added special effects!

Wartower: I’m a big fan of raiding and I was very happy to hear an attrition mechanic so ultimately players are going to go game over and turn around. But what I didn’t like was the addition of a micro transaction that could circumvent this attrition. Do you have any plans for the raiding community to lock that item out of final group raiding?

CJ: That item is actually not usable in dungeons. It is not usable in the high level raiding type stuff.

Gaming-insight.de: I’m really interested in craftable items compared to normal loot you get from dungeons concerning the end game and raid content. How important will it be to rely on craftables and how much do I need my dungeon loot?

EF: Our basic philosophy on all of that is that the base power level that you need to get to in order to do things, is attainable multiple ways, its attainable in whatever way you most enjoy playing the game. So those items will be available to WvW players, I can get those items in WvW. If I’m a dungeon player and all I want to do is play dungeons then I can get sort of to that power level by playing dungeons. If I’m a player who really enjoys crafting and really enjoys being out in the open world, I can get those items by either crafting or through drops or like that. In a lot of game there’s sort of a power tier that’s reserved for a particular type of content and then what happens is that content suddenly becomes the end game of the game, it becomes the thing you have to do because it’s the only way to get that power. And so what we did is spread that power out, throughout all the different types of content so you shouldn’t feel like you have to do dungeons or that you have to do WvW or that you have to do this.

A big part of Guild Wars 2 is all about playing the game the way you want to play. And as Colin mentioned before, if I get that tier of items by playing dungeons those items will have a certain appearance and the only way to get that appearance is by having attained those items through dungeons. The same goes for crafting, there’s a certain look to the super high level crafted items that you can only get by crafting the item. There’s a certain look, there’s a WvW armor set that you can only get through playing WvW. And so that high end reward thing, appearance is really the thing, but as far as power goes, you can get power by doing any part of the game.

Guild Wars 2 Fan Blog: I wanted to ask you a question about Martin Kerstein’s blog post about building community. Recently he wrote that you will be opening new forums, the official ones, and I wanted to ask what kind of a shift does it mean for your community policy. I mean your community managers were often present on different fan forums like Guild Wars Guru, does it mean they will be coming back to the official forums and they won’t be appearing on community forums? When will the forums officially be launched and will they be available only in English or will there be sub forums in other languages? 

Regina: I guess that’s my question. In terms of what it means for the community, it means that we will be participating on the official forums but we don’t think that it means that the fan sites will die out as some people have been predicting. The thing is that a lot of people enjoy having the freedom and being able to speak their mind. They don’t want to be moderated by “the man” which can happen on official forums and our community philosophy is that is that we want to have a welcoming and friendly community with productive discussion and we will moderate to that effect. And it does mean that we might not have as much time to communicate on different fan forums, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still be reading and that we won’t still be watching. In terms of supported languages the forums will be in languages that we have community managers for, so the main languages for the game.

CJ: Wherever you post we’re always watching!

Regina: Even if we don’t post, we’re reading.

Guild Wars 2 Spain: (audio unclear) What you can tell us about Ebonhawke?

RS: Ebonhawke is the last real bastion of the Ascalon resistance, the Ebon Vanguard. They’re being assisted by the queen of Kryta who has sent seraph, who have an Asura Gate in Divinity’s Reach through which she sends supplies to make sure they’re provided for against the charr. They’ve been holding out for a very long time right now and they’re on the edge of a treaty with the charr. If that goes through Ebonhawke’s position will probably be a lot more stable but as it is they are sort of losing the battle against the charr in Ascalon. The charr have had Ascalon now for a very long time and have pretty well kept the line against the humans; the humans have resorted to guerrilla tactics to try to keep the charr off balance. But they just don’t have the forces to commit to taking any part of Ascalon back, they can only really keep the fortress.

A lot of people in Ebonhawke feel that if the Queen would give them more support, more troops they might be able to take part of Ebonhawke back, so there’s a certain amount of friction there. There’s also friction in the fact that the people holding Ebonhawke tend to be the descendants of Ascalon, the descendants of King Adelbern and so forth, and the Queen of Kryta sort of rules them right now and they feel like they should be an independant country but they’re trapped in the position where they have to rely on Kryta so they can’t really be independent. They’re hoping that if they can work this through, then they can once again have their own leadership, their own king.

Guild Mag Spain: My question is focussed on the lore in Guild Wars 2. In the game how will we be able to explore the lore of the early Tyria?

RS: There are a lot of ways that we get lore across to the player. One is in the personal story where your character actually goes investigates the Durmand Priory which is very big on finding out ancient lore finding anything that was left by the (not clear, lords possibly?) in particular hopefully to fight the dragons with, but you can follow a story chain, you can make choices that will give you more information on that if that’s what you’re interested in.

Throughout the rest of the game we’ve also got places you can go find, people you can interact with, locations you can recognise from Guild Wars 1 and some that are even older than Guild Wars 1. When you go to Orr you’re going to get a lot of information going back and forth from place to place about how that country operated, how the people there lived and that will give you a lot of very initial information on the humans in Tyria.

CJ: There’s a lot of unanswered questions from Guild Wars 1 that the answers are scattered all throughout Guild Wars 2 as well, so there’s lot of great Easter Eggs for people who love Guild Wars 1 lore. And we tried to give all the lore of the world in there so people who have never played Guild Wars 1 can actually understand the story and understand the history without having to go back and play GW1. You’re going to learn all that by just playing Guild Wars 2.

RS: By playing Guild wars 2 we want you to love Tyria, and if you love Tyria then this past information, this historical egg, stuff in the background is going to be important to you as well.

Guild Wars 2 Spain: Will the game be made available with Spanish voice acting as well as text at some point in the future?

KP: I don’t think we’re sure about that.

EF: I think that’s something that we’re continuing to investigate, I’m not sure we actually know about that. Sorry.

CJ: The people who can answer that are not sitting in this room.

Mediavida: In our community, everybody plays a lot of games especially esports like for example League of Legends our mates are very interested if you’re likely to orient your PvP into an esport in a more competitive way, organising tournaments etc.

EF: We would definitely like our PvP to become an esport. I think there are a lot of things you have to do to support that. The first thing you have to do is come out with a game that is sort of broadly appealing that can bring in a big PvP audience and keep those players playing it. So that’s kind of the thing that we’ve been concentrating on the most, is trying to make the PvP game that is really accessible that people that can kind of get into and really play and has a lot of ability to really master it. I think once we do that then you have to kind of come in with that second tier of support like observer mode and being able to watch matches and having tournaments and having support for all of that. So it’s fully our intent to support the game as an esport and right now we’re concentrating on releasing a broadly appealing accessible and fun to watch form of PvP and that’s kind of our concentration at the moment to do that, but we definitely look at our competitive PvP as an esport.

Mmorpgmania.it/gw2italia.it: We had a chance to try the game and noticed that the side kicking system didn’t work inside instances. We were wondering if you are going to confirm this or if in the future or in the release there is a side kicking system inside instances or dungeons?

CJ: There is side kicking in all of dungeons in the game. Each dungeon whether it is a story dungeon or an explorable dungeon has a correlated level that your character gets side kicked down to if you are over the level of the dungeon, but we do not sidekick you up to the level of the dungeon. So to do any of the dungeons in the game you need to get be high enough level to participate in it and then if you go over level for it, we’ll side kick you down to keep it challenging and fun for you. So for example the Ascalon Catacombs story dungeon is a level 30 and if you get up to say, level 38 we’ll side kick you down to the level of the dungeon so you can keep playing it with everyone and have it be fun and challenging for you.

EF: One thing to note is that, earlier we talked about how we were going allow players to sidekick up in level we actually don’t have that functionality in the game and the reason we don’t have it is because when we were going through the game we thought one of the really important moments in the game was kind of that moment where you ran into something and you weren’t quite powerful enough to overcome it, or skilled enough to overcome it, and we wanted to give people the ability to kind of be able to build their character in such a way that you could by those moments instead of just bypassing them by getting artificially side kicked up a level. And so we don’t have side kicking up anymore in the game anymore except for in WvW. So if you want to think of how our dynamic level adjustment works is that it automatically happens downwards in PvE and automatically happens upwards in WvW. And competitive PvP obviously you get set to equal level everybody. So that’s kind of how that works now.

You can read the other half of the Q and A session on GuildMag

There’s a lot of crying about the inequalities between the amount that USA, UK and EU will have to pay for the CE. It is understandable. There’s is a lot of money difference. But this post by DoubleFine on Steam lends a whole new perspective on the issue.

For those of you who don’t want to read the wall of text (what the heck are you doing reading my posts anyway?), the jist is this. DoubleFine have realised that charging the same amount across the board on Steam is unfair to people overseas and are adjusting their pricing to follow a formula which takes into consideration the exchange rate over the last 6 months and local taxes.

It is worth noting that this only applies to Steam purchases. The difference being that in the UK and EU, taxes get taken before Steam and the developers get their cut while in the USA sales taxes are unmonitored for online purchases and on good faith so of course no one pays them. For physical purchases, every state has their own taxes which get added to the price in store (I think, that’s how it worked last time I was over there anyway).

Applying the DoubleFine formula to the Guild Wars 2 CE we get the following:

British Pounds Sterling (0.64 conversion rate)

$150 = £96 + 20% VAT = £ 115.20

Euro (0.75 conversion rate)

$150 = E112.5 + 20% VAT = E135

This doesn’t take into consideration any additional shipping costs or admin overhead caused by importing and all those other bits.

(It also doesn’t consider the scenario where stuff gets taken to the EU from UK, which would make the CE around E140.)

You could argue that ArenaNet could artificially raise the price of the USA CE to make everything seem fairer, but to me that’s worse than the situation we’re in now. And you can argue that the governments of Europe shouldn’t be so greedy with their taxes, but heck I like that I don’t have to worry about hospital bills and that the roads get fixed.

Overall, I’m not arguing that it doesn’t suck that we have to pay more for being a Euro, but I am arguing that it isn’t entirely ArenaNet’s fault.

Starting off with the goodies that everyone will recieve – participation in beta, a 3 day headstart and the Hero’s Band. These items are a great incentive to pre-purchase the game. A million people want to participate in beta and few of them will get to do so for the end of March beta, so lumping inclusion in beta with any purchase helps people part with their cash now. Headstarts are becoming standard with MMO pre-purchases, and help developers by dispursing the population rather than creating a day 1 crunch on the starter zones. The Hero’s Band is a nice prestige item, but will undoubtably be surpassed by other items your character can get rather quickly.

The digital items included in the non-standard editions are a mixed bag. The mini Rytlock is arguably the most valuable of these as the Golem Butler, Chalice of Glory and Tome of Influence will expire. The elite skill is a potentially dangerous double edged sword for ArenaNet. Make it too powerful and buying something other than the standard edition creates a situation where paying money will result in being more powerful. Balance it too far the other way, which I believe is what will happen, and forking out the cash for something other than the standard edition becomes a less appealling prospect. On it’s own though, the mini is some sort of prestige item that shows that the owner forked over extra cash.

The Tome of Influence is very very interesting however. It indicates that members of guilds that bought something other than the Standard Edition can gift their guild a load of influence, which in turn guilds can spend on a number of upgrades. Considering guild-less players will be attracted to guilds that can offer them upgrades and bonuses relevant to their interests, they’re more likely to be drawn to organised guilds formed (and gelled together) before release. It makes the job of startups in Guild Wars 2 harder – like they didn’t have enough trouble with the multi-guild approach of Guild Wars 2.

When we get to the Collector’s Edition, I’m somewhat disappointed. The physical items are interesting to me, especially the soundtrack and making of book. Plus Rytlock will look awesome in my lounge. The reason I’m disappointed is that the only difference between the Deluxe Digital and Collectors Edition is the physical items. There’s no Divine Aura and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve regretted not buying the Prophecies CE for Divine Aura. No special dances (a Guild Wars staple) and no extra character slots. Ultimately, there’s nothing I can show someone in game to say I supported ArenaNet by purchasing the Collectors Edition and that’s a big glaring hole in the package being offered.

It turns the Collector’s Edition into a once per household purchase (as everyone can share the physical goods) rather than a once per player purchase.

A final word on pricing inequalities. The Collector’s Edition is pricey at $150, but UK and European residents will pay £130 and 150Euro respectively. Ravious brings up a good point in that this is likely a result of import and other taxes rather than ArenaNet feeling they can get away with charging more in overseas territories. However, that makes me feel worse about handing over £130, knowing that ArenaNet won’t necessarily recieve any more of my money for their efforts. And yes I would have liked to not have to pay as much, but then who the hell wouldn’t.

Less than a month til pre-purchase starts, better start saving.