So I’ve been reading lots of excited posts a out the GW2 beta of late. I of course happen to have a week long holiday booked from this Sunday, so even if I were to break my own decision to avoid the beta I’ll be away anyway for the next two weekends.
My expectations for GW2, riffing off a post by Keen, are pretty simple actually. I want engaging PVE content (which GW1 has in ample supply) which can be enjoyed by small groups of varying sizes. This is my dream template for an MMO, freed from the fixed sized group, instanced content, limitation on fun. Rift was close with this so I hope GW2 improves on it with their event system.
I’ll certainly be reading any non-spoilerish posts on the game when I get back – for quite some time GW2 has been *the* casual game, with no sub barrier, that can bring my wider circle of ex-WoW friends back together. Fingers firmly crossed it delivers! I am not expecting it to be the ‘WoW-killer’ or somesuch nonesense, rather I just want a fun game to play with friends without too many barriers (party size/level difference/sub level) in the way. I suspect it will deliver on that in spades.
It’s worth noting that I do not consider GW2 to be just another F2P game. The big difference is that all content, whether classes, races, zones, instances or whatever is available out of the box for the cost of that box. With all the F2P games I’ve tried this has been an issue, either my group of friends have been on different levels of free/premium/sub or we’ve had varying access to content packs – in the end it becomes an issue as invariably one of us isn’t that into the game and doesn’t want to spend money on it. This time around that won’t be an issue.
Bhagpuss has an interesting article about the apparent focus on PVP among those blogging or forum posting on GW2. Well I’ll happily stand up as one who has zero interest in the WvW content in GW2. It’s all about the PVE for me. Any buffs that might be in effect because of the PvP status of my world will be just that, background environmental effects – I’m going to be playing for the beautiful and interesting world of Tyria in this new incarnation and that’s more than enough for me.
GamingSF 