BWE 2: Day 2 at a Glance

Note:  This post has not been edited.  I will get to the post as soon as possible sometime after this weekend's beta event.

Amazing.  Overnight, ArenaNet managed to squash all of the bugs I mentioned yesterday and solved any latency woes our sever was having.  I explored the new zone, Gendarren Fields, and instantly loved it. Pirates, the Vigil Headquarters, a glorious mansion.  What more could you ask for?  One sequence of events around a mansion in the area stands out specifically in my mind, and in-game it felt like I was watching a story unfold.  My realm, Crystal Desert, remained absolutely dominant today against two other servers.  And by dominant, I mean all places on every map, for almost the entire day.  Any tower or keep another team captured, was recaptured within 15 minutes.  There were even some ArenaNet staff on one of the realms, but even their glorious logo could not save them from our blood-stained hands.



To start off the day, I arrived in Eternal Battlegrounds and made my way into the new dungeon/jumping puzzle. It was a painful, frustrating, phenomenal experience that I thoroughly enjoyed.  The traps were really fun to use against your own friends/guild mates.  Don't tell anyone I said that.  Sadly, the animal traps at the end were not very effective in achieving the desired result. :(

I also was able to run through Ascalonian Catacombs, story mode, in it's entirety. There was a slight bug in the beginning where the party was split between several different phases of the same instance, but we reformed the party and quickly began our assault.  The dungeon was good, a little dark/damp for my tastes, but still fun.  We definitely died a lot, but I think we slowly became a little better over the course of the dungeon.  I feel like PvE combat at the moment is kind of like organized chaos.  Everyone's generally fulfilling certain roles at various times, moving, rezzing, returning from the waypoint, fleeing, attacking, tanking, supporting, healing, controlling.  I'm not sure if the hard-core lover of raiders will fall in love with the explorable modes, but I think we will have to wait and see to grasp a better picture of higher-end PvE.

My biggest complaint of the day is the fact that our server has crushed 4 servers now to oblivion.  While fun and Hillary at times, its kind of sad to see so few enemies.  The only time where there was substantial action in any of the zones was the past two hours.  I also wanted to shoutout to SOV, a great guild that helped organize some of the major offensives in the last hour.    PvP tournaments were down for a significant portion of the day, but I must admit their absence wasn't particularly noted.

Most of these topics will probably receive their own blog post over the next couple of weeks.  However, I just wanted to end with a simple statement.I'm now approaching close to 50 hours of play time, and I'm still loving my time in Tyria.