I continued my thief and got him to level 25. I also tried out the ranger profession and played a little into the Norn's personal story. I explored further into Kessex Hills and discovered the fate of my sister, had amazing duels with a very skilled mesmer in 5v5, and my realm fought our first losing battle in WvW. Also, the final beta event was hilarious and quite enjoyable. (Hint: When critters attack.)
So my thief was a blast to play. I can't tell you how much fun a shortbow is to use. Even in PvP when this is primarily an AOE weapon, the weapon is amazing in mobility. It can get you out of very tricky situations and allow you to live another day. Oh, I have to tell you this hilarious story. I got ambushed by 2 enemies in WvW and was using my shortbow to keep them away from me. I kept using 3 to jump back and fell over a cliff. When I fell, I barely lived with possibly 50 hp remaining. The two people chasing me jumped after me, and both fell to their deaths. I would of loved to say I had planned it, but alas, I am not that brilliant.
Once again, it bears repeating that the World is stunning. There simply is not the "cut and paste" in this game and I have to keep reminding myself of that. Over the next hill is just something devastatingly new.
I discovered the Kodan in Snowdrift Plains, but I could not gain any quests with them because of a broken dynamic event. The Quaggan emissary just simply refused to move, and thus the Kodan refused to do more than talk to me. Though, I did hear hints of their northern Sanctuary and I traveled as far north as I could. Sadly, the zone is not open. I am dying to see that place. However, chill in this place is so annoying. These crystals would AOE chill me, and hindered my movement considerably. They also hit extraordinarily hard, and I circumvented the entire area out of frustration.
I discovered the Kodan in Snowdrift Plains, but I could not gain any quests with them because of a broken dynamic event. The Quaggan emissary just simply refused to move, and thus the Kodan refused to do more than talk to me. Though, I did hear hints of their northern Sanctuary and I traveled as far north as I could. Sadly, the zone is not open. I am dying to see that place. However, chill in this place is so annoying. These crystals would AOE chill me, and hindered my movement considerably. They also hit extraordinarily hard, and I circumvented the entire area out of frustration.
Dynamic events seem to repeat quite often at this point. I'm a little worried on how often someone will want to go through the same zone. I think you could probably go through the same zone around twice before seeing everything. After that, I think you would know all of the surprises.
I played 5v5s with my brother, a mesmer, which eventually broiled down to 2v2s. Both sides consisted of a thief and a mesmer, and God was it fun to play. I alternated between keeping distance with a shortbow when I needed to stall, waiting for my heal, and diving in to tear apart the opposing thief. This mesmer, Oompa was absolutely terrifying though. I had several 1v1 fights with her, and I won 1 out of the 3 fights. She was very skilled, and relied on mass confusion with her clones, and doing the shatter that causes damage. One time, I had the upper hand the entire match and I went from 2/3 hp to dead by something. I have no idea what she did, but I'm guessing it was 3 clone shatters right next to me. I also watched some 1v1 fights between 2 mesmers, and I was a little disappointed. Neither could kill the other. It was the equivalent of 2 healers fighting in WoW. They would place conditions on each other only to have them removed.
Now that I have had three days in Guild Wars 2, I can better attest to the balance of the game. Guardian and mesmer damage in general, specifically though in PvE, seem to kill things very slowly. Guardians lack range and mobility, whereas mesmers lack armor and health. Every class seems to lack something, which I think is very refreshing. Warriors have amazing burst, and I am sad to say I got hit by some 7-8k hit by one of them. However, they also die rather quickly, so you have to either kite them or outsmart them to win. A lot of classes require different strategies to win, you can't just do the same rotation, which is also very fantastic. Rangers have some pet issues. Some pets seem to work beautifully, while others are practically useless. Rangers are decent all around, however, I did not like them that much. Elementalists seem pretty weak at the moment, there was never a moment where I was like oh God an Ele!!! An Ele seen, was an Ele dead. Again, I'm not sure if that was the professions fault, or the skill of the player. They were very competent at PvE though. Necromancers can last a very long time in a fight with the death shroud mechanic. I need to look into how the mechanic works, but they can be very frightening. The Engineer was pretty fun to play with and against. The Elixir engineer and the bomb engineer were great threats on the battlefield. The thief seems to be reasonable in their damage output. You lack a large amount of armor and health, but I think we make up for it with our escape mechanics. A good thief will rarely die come launch. I have a good amount of complaints about the thief, but I will save it for its own separate blog post.
When creating a norn, for some reason hair styles were glitched. Parts of the hair were just simply missing. I was watching my friend make a Norn, and he did not have this problem. I'm not sure what was going wrong.
The final beta event was hilarious. We were all in Wayfarer Hills (the Norn starting area), and I was right outside this village with around a 100 people. All of a sudden this dynamic event starts zone wide to kill all nearby critters. Imagine 100 people racing through the woods killing everything, it was great. About 5 minutes later as we got dispersed, I saw a small group of players begin combat with a pig. To my horror, the pig facerolled through all the players. I ran for my life. There was also an elite, champion, whatever, white rabbit worthy of any Monty Python reference. The raccoons were even more terrifying. I ran into one alone, and was like I can do this, just kite him. He summoned giant birds to eat me, and I was quickly downed. Then there were the moas. The Black Moa. Again, I stumbled on one alone. I was like, psh, this time I can definitely kite him. I kited 3 veteran rats, why I can't I do a bird. NO. Don't do it. I started my kiting technique, and was easily keeping my distance. All of a sudden the bird breathes this epic firebomb, equal to the animation of a trebuchet. I was unharmed, scared, but unharmed, and continued kiting. Then, equal to any absolute nightmare, he pulled me towards him. Before I even knew what happened, he blew his little fire-bomb and instantly killed me. Yes, it was that quick. Later, I discovered you could dodge right as he pulled you in, and you could escape the firebomb. All in all, it was a semi-sweet final beta event. However, I don't know if it was worthy of an hour of my time. If they had shortened it to maybe 20 minutes it would have been more fun, and less waiting "for a dragon to appear over the sky". Sadly, there were no dragons to report.
When creating a norn, for some reason hair styles were glitched. Parts of the hair were just simply missing. I was watching my friend make a Norn, and he did not have this problem. I'm not sure what was going wrong.
The final beta event was hilarious. We were all in Wayfarer Hills (the Norn starting area), and I was right outside this village with around a 100 people. All of a sudden this dynamic event starts zone wide to kill all nearby critters. Imagine 100 people racing through the woods killing everything, it was great. About 5 minutes later as we got dispersed, I saw a small group of players begin combat with a pig. To my horror, the pig facerolled through all the players. I ran for my life. There was also an elite, champion, whatever, white rabbit worthy of any Monty Python reference. The raccoons were even more terrifying. I ran into one alone, and was like I can do this, just kite him. He summoned giant birds to eat me, and I was quickly downed. Then there were the moas. The Black Moa. Again, I stumbled on one alone. I was like, psh, this time I can definitely kite him. I kited 3 veteran rats, why I can't I do a bird. NO. Don't do it. I started my kiting technique, and was easily keeping my distance. All of a sudden the bird breathes this epic firebomb, equal to the animation of a trebuchet. I was unharmed, scared, but unharmed, and continued kiting. Then, equal to any absolute nightmare, he pulled me towards him. Before I even knew what happened, he blew his little fire-bomb and instantly killed me. Yes, it was that quick. Later, I discovered you could dodge right as he pulled you in, and you could escape the firebomb. All in all, it was a semi-sweet final beta event. However, I don't know if it was worthy of an hour of my time. If they had shortened it to maybe 20 minutes it would have been more fun, and less waiting "for a dragon to appear over the sky". Sadly, there were no dragons to report.
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