Guild Wars 2 announced release date

Are you prepared?

28th August 2012 - Release the kr---hounds!

HOM reward - Heavenly Bracers

Guild Wars 2 confirmed released date. It was a momentous occasion for many fans and Arenanet when yesterday they finally let us circle that special date in the calendar---28th August is the magical number and hopefully they will indeed have everything ready by that time, considering how zealous the company has been regarding the date up until now, the backlash would be too damaging in the event of the release and the game still have glaring problems as other mmos have done so.

HOM reward - Fiery Dragon Sword

To be fair, the bugs and most problems I encountered were minor in nature and easily fixed...except for the ranger pet AI in the stress test that seem to have regressed (possibly running a older build, even though I couldn't confirm) and the pet most of the time simply stopped attacking on it's own---which considering it's a mandatory profession feature means that it's quite game breaking, on a more positive note the server stability and overall connectivity/performance have improved to the point that gameplay was fluid even in mass scaled battles with many players, and that's a very important thing, games that have big scale events/battles surprinsingly and disappointingly tend to NOT be able to handle the heavy influx of many players gathered in the same area, resulting in a crippled game feature and consequent backlash (Aion and Rift comes to mind). Thankfully Guild Wars 2 seem to be heading in the right direction in that sense, and I hope come release this experience will be even more heightened.

HOM rewards - Ice Breaker and White Raven Companion

At the heels of a announced release date, a short reminder to any who still hasn't gotten this game why it could be good...





Eight professions, five races...thousands of character combinations 

Which profession will you choose?

The personal stories add a singular perspective to players and following it's predecessor, enhances the experience of each individually created character to a level never seen in other games, the thousands of combinations refer to the personal choices done throughout the game but they all originate from the first choices done after selecting race and profession---from that moment and every other choice made for your character's story afterwards will affect the development of it's personal story and also the type/story you will see if you lead your party in the dungeons.

The 5 race's iconic heroes

Dynamic Combat, complex and entertaining skill/trait system


Due to the very active combat system and creatively situational skill/trait system, even if some of the professions use the traditional names from older mmos such as thief, warrior, ranger and elementalist, in Guild Wars 2 they still catch the players attention with their unique play styles. The attempt to rid the holy trinity of tank-dps-healer in guild wars 2 can be deemed a success as throughout large scale battles and pve events everyone's role is active and equally important and useful, therefore eliminating situations like bottlenecks due to everything relying on certain professions such as tank or healer to progress anywhere in the game. The following video was one I found to explain quite succinctly what we can expect for the game's combat system and overal mechanism.



Be rewarded for your skills, for knowing when and where to use the right skill, for using anything and everything at your disposable including each skills effects--combination of skills merged with another players or the active dodge system! After having tried out the betas I can say that I wasn't disappointed, as the saying goes "everything looks good on paper" but in this case, it works wonderfully even in practice and I find myself gladly waiting for more game time after each beta---something that hasn't happened in a long time as I tried one after another mmo and was only disappointed come beta time.

It's viable to use anything and everything you find

Progress doesn't wait for any profession or lack thereof

Statistics will not cripple you in this game

Any and all group combinations will work

Dynamic and Heart events and a engaging environment

Regardless of the event or the scale of it, the active role they play in the world, how they affect it or simply for the reward that players of any level will get and find it equally useful, players will unavoidably find themselves engage in some activity constantly or simply whenever they choose to in their current area, character evolution takes on a more active and compelling form this way rather then the traditional quest systems and more importantly everyone can join in at anytime and contribute to the events in progress without fearing players stealing mobs or items as the reward for mob killing shares according to damage done while items looted by another will still be there for yet another player, even during the heavy influx of players in the starter areas during betas, the game experience was still exciting and stress free unlike other mmos where players have to compete and often times be rude to others.




Dungeons and secrets hidden throughout the world

As I had mentioned before, personal stories affects what you will get in the dungeon, depending on who leads the party that will brave the dungeon, the path you will take once inside and the story you will witness changes, this means that what you will find inside both in enemies and rewards will be different each time you return to the same dungeon, from the known and explored dungeons we can see that making use of what is within and solving puzzles is just as important in terms of progressing within as it was on the outside, this makes dungeon runs far more entertaining and re-run values increased in comparison, additionally, like dungeons there are secret areas in the world of Tyria that can only be found and accessed through meticulous exploration and at the same time requires some platform jumping and other interactions to reach/complete.




And while these are only a fraction of what the game has to offer, it's easy to see that for a subscription free game, Guild Wars 2 has already exceeded many's expectations and I for one look forward to the final product to when it finally releases in August!

If not, GET PREPARED