I feel like I cannot even begin to tell you all everything I experienced this weekend during the first pre-purchase beta event for Guild Wars 2. I had a great time, I discovered a great many things, and did as many different things as I could with the time I had. The best part? I barely scratched the surface!

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Personal Story

I chose to be human nobility. I also chose the option of being an orphan who was adopted and that meant that my character does not know who her true parents are.  I won’t be spoiling anything that happens in that story line for you, but I will tell you that I got up to about level 14 in that quest chain and I was finding it to be rather intriguing. It started off pretty normal, with nothing really outstanding about it, and then an element of mystery came into play and I was really looking forward to how events would pan out for my character.

Dynamic Events

I was a part of many events, much more than I was expecting to be present in fact. Right from the beginning I was thrown into a fight against a giant elemental. After that I encountered veteran and champion level giant wurms, spiders, cave trolls, and more that were all part of their own dynamic event chains (or hidden gems to fight in the case of the cave troll). It took me a few times of traversing the starter zone to encounter them all too, so it always felt like the region was alive and changing.

I had the pleasure of encountering the Shadow Behemoth as well (sorry I was so busy fighting both the monster AND my crap frame rate that I forgot to screenshot it!) and he was EPIC. Some people complain that the Shadow Behemoth’s difficulty should be increased as he felt a little too easy, but I think that the goal there was to ease people into the game (he is located in the starter zone). While I do agree that he was pretty easy and his difficulty should be increased, it should only be a small amount of difficulty that is added so that new players aren’t discouraged from trying the larger scale dynamic events (in my opinion).

Crafting

My time this weekend was limited, but I tried my best to at least get mildly familiar with the crafting system. I grasped the basics pretty quickly as they are similar to other games: gather materials and make things. So I gathered scraps of jute and made myself some 8-slot bags (which were much needed!). After those basics though is where I got a little lost on the path to crafting glory. I tried to craft an insignia, but failed to ever accomplish the task either due to lack of the proper materials or the knowledge of what was required to do so. Crafting will definitely be something I explore in greater depth though as I did find it to be fun.

World Vs. World PvP

Alas, my computer simply could not handle massive amounts of characters casting massive amounts of skills all in one spot and my frame rate quickly dropped to a level so low that I couldn’t enjoy face to face PvP in World vs. World combat. I quickly devised a way around this issue though so that I could still be a part of the action and gain the rewards of participation and made my way into a nice large castle that my server was in control of. Once inside I headed out to the location of a very happy little cannon and began blasting my foes with great joy. After completing the defensive event a few times I started to notice cows randomly flying across my screen and so I watched carefully for the source of the cows. I wasn’t sure if it was a glitch or being done on purpose and if it was a glitch I wanted to report it. I finally saw the source of the cows to be the trebuchet! They were flinging cows as ammunition! LOL. Oh man, I laughed so hard at that.

Races/Classes/Exploration

Well I am quite boring in this category hehe. I had no interest at all in playing a Charr… so I didn’t. I also did not make it over to the Charr starting zone either so I cannot comment on anything related to the Charr for this beta event. I also had no interest in playing a Norn… so I didn’t. I did however make it to the Norn starting zone and it is beautiful. Some of the events there were really fun too (ahem… throwing snowballs at children). I really liked the Raven’s riddle test! It was nice to get a variety in the types of things required of us and I hope to see more brain teasers throughout the game. To be honest, I didn’t have much interest in playing a human either, but since I ran out of options with them, I chose to play a human. (As soon as they become available, the races I wanted to play are the Asura and Sylvari. I plan to make an Asura my main character – they are soooooo cute)!

I didn’t have much interest in the variety of classes available either. I know, I know, I am a broken record now lol. For some reason I have an almost laser focus as to what I enjoy playing and what interests me about this game. I knew for sure that I wanted to play a guardian and I decided to test run an elementalist as well. All the other classes just held no appeal to me. After playing both guardian and elementalist I am certain guardian will be my main character’s class at launch because I enjoyed it so much. Elementalist was a bit of a struggle for me and I never quite got “into it”. My favorite thing to do as a guardian? Breathe blue fire like a dragon! Oh, how I love the torch!

Bugs (not the creepy crawlies)

I sent my fair share of bug reports in over the course of the weekend event that’s for sure. Some of the bugs were just funny, such as the ability to jump while sleeping, sitting, or performing other emotes. (I discovered point, laugh, and cry but dance seems to either be incomplete and missing or possibly locked so that the dances are revealed at launch). Other bugs were inconvenient to completionists such as myself, like the skill point guy who was always dead  that caused me to remain forever at 99% completion of the Queensdale region. However some bugs were fairly game breaking (yes, they were reported as I am a good little beta tester) such as the fact that my mouse would be rendered unusable in game after underwater submersion and the full map lockout I experienced during World Vs. World that made it impossible to log in to my character until someone left the map and freed up a space for my character.

Event Coverage

As I stated above, my computer is a little…. challenged, shall we say? Basically, my computer is far from being the beast that my husband’s computer is and therefore I did not take any video footage with my computer. Not to worry! Mike took plenty of video footage and he is in the process of making a truly epic Guild Wars 2 video using that footage. On my end of things, (ever resourceful as I am) I chronicled my journeys through Tyria via screenshot. I actually had quite a bit of fun in just trying to pose my character in certain situations and grab pictures of everything that I could. Something to keep in mind – my computer was not set to max settings so that I could play the game more smoothly and therefore I did not take HD screenshots (which are available in game). My settings were at medium and I still found the game to be stunningly beautiful. There were moments I would catch myself just staring at the wide vistas and gorgeous environments.

All in all, I took about 200 screenshots over the weekend so the slideshow below is only a small snippet of that, yet it still tells my tale fairly well. I may do some follow-up slideshows to show you the rest

As the song in the video suggests… once is not enough, I always want more! I cannot wait for the next beta event which is sadly at least a month away now *sigh*. These photos will just have to keep my memories alive until I can make more. What are your favorite memories from this beta (if you were in it)? What do you look forward to the most in game?

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