Guild Wars 2 finally starts to come to life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAh1OHBI4uM&feature=player_embedded

nice vid , ranger demo play from gamescom, one of the most beautiful landscapes ive seen so far in gw2

http://kotaku.com/5619863/forty+five-minutes-as-a-bunny+loving-guild-wars-2-necromancer

BUNNY WRANGLING.

Guys, I now know what I'm going to be doing whenever I get bored.

Obviously no great surprise at this point, but the Necromancer is officially out.

http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/necromancer/

Necromancer is one profession I've never liked much, so I'm kind of just like "eh, whatever".

Looks like with the Death Shroud thing they did indeed fold Ritualist into Necro, though. Sort of. Spirits > undead minions, in my opinion.

(also, I don't know about you, Ush, but the "hit a certain point and turn into a spirit form" thing looks very familiar to me 😛)

...looking at screenshots...yep. Ritualist has become part of Necromancer. Blindfolds were definitely a Ritualist thing, and yeah.

Meanwhile as we await the possible Mesmer reveal, I am pleased to see that Arena.net have taken a similar view to mine expressed earlier in this thread about counterspells/interrupts.

-

EricFlannum: There is less emphasis in Guild Wars 2 on super quick reaction (within less than a second) skills. Instead we tend to focus more on strategic positioning and proactive skill usage. That is not to say that we don’t have interrupts, but with our lowered emphasis on healing, it is much less important.

-

Yay!

There is not yet any evidence that Hexes are in the game either- in fact, we know that hexes as they currently are are definitely gone, though magically causing conditions is still there), so it might be interesting to see what they've actually done with the Mesmer.

hexes are in, they're just called 'Marks' just like Enchantments are "gone" replaced by 'Boons'.

Marks are not Hexes; they are nothing like Hexes. Marks are a form of area effect spell. They might heal, harm, protect, whatever- depends on the spell- but they affect everyone in the area cast.

That's conceptually different on several levels from a Hex, which is a unique lingering negative effect on someone.

It is Conditions that are the opposite of Boons, not Marks.

The makers specified that Hexes, conceptually are out. Only Conditions can be given to people, and Conditions are finite in scope.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Marks are a form of area effect spell. They might heal, harm, protect, whatever- depends on the spell- but they affect everyone in the area cast.

Thats a bit too much like a Well.

Wells are now centred on the caster. Marks are centred where you target them.

Marks are basically a cross between a Well and a Trap, now, it seems. You place it where you want it to be and it creates an AoE effect (like a well), but it triggers when either you set it off (which is new and neat) or when an enemy comes across is (like a trap).

Ever cynical critic Spoony compares FFXIV and GW2.

Much awesomeness ensues.

http://spoonyexperiment.com/2010/09/13/pax-coverage-final-fantasy-xiv-guild-wars-2/#disqus_thread

I'm going to take from the notes under the video that he loved GW2 and hated FFXIV, since I can't stand to watch his videos.

Not surprised!

FF14 looked nice, but you can't argue with he video evidence..did you see that ship battle? It sucked major ass, that was some boring arse gameplay. Would someone really PAY to play that? There is no question GW2 shits all over FF14.

GW 2 looks like it stomps a lot of MMO's currently, especially since its not pay to play, I look forward to making an Asura Necormancer.

Spoony always gets to the heart of things. It's good that GW2 is getting a lot of positive media coverage.

Am I the only person who was really enjoying the video and the visual and audiological beauty of the world the FFXIV makers have created until Spoony had to rudely interject?

Also aside from the fact that the more slowly paced, command based, less cinematic combat style of FFXIV isn't necessarily something that's bad, it's likely that was largely due to the fact that what we were seeing was a combat tutorial that typically slow down the pace of the battle as they attempt to instruct the player in as clear and easy a manner as possible.

I reckon you are in a minority, yes. It was hardly useful as part of a gameplay demo, and compared to the Guild Wars 2 presentations it was useless. Pretty videos we have seen ten a penny. Decent game demonstrations are rare.

And if what you say is true, then it was pretty useless as a product demonstration also, wasn't it? Why show a useless, slow, boring part that's not representative? As, again, opposed to GW2, which did an awesome demonstration of the game.

As far as the purpose of demos goes, GW2 kicked the crap out of FFXIV. No point denying it.

More concerning than a bad demo is that apparently there are still some near game breaking bugs in the FFXIV beta, just a couple weeks away from release.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
I reckon you are in a minority, yes. It was hardly useful as part of a gameplay demo, and compared to the Guild Wars 2 presentations it was useless. Pretty videos we have seen ten a penny. Decent game demonstrations are rare.

And if what you say is true, then it was pretty useless as a product demonstration also, wasn't it? Why show a useless, slow, boring part that's not representative? As, again, opposed to GW2, which did an awesome demonstration of the game.

As far as the purpose of demos goes, GW2 kicked the crap out of FFXIV. No point denying it.

I can't say that I can agree with anything you've really said here. One of FFXIV's main focuses as a game, according to the designers, is to create a grand world that players can escape into for hours on end with a great emphasis on exploration of the environment. To that end, I'm not sure how you can see the atmosphere of the setting as anything but a crucial component of the game. The atmosphere of the setting has the capacity to greatly add to the enjoyment of the exploration of and general travel through the setting, and what is clearly highly captivating art design and composition, as far as what the video demonstrates, speaks quite highly for the kind of experience you can expect to get when playing through the game.

With regards to the tutorial's placement in the demo, I could perhaps see your point if it had been the entirety of the demonstration. Assuming that the designers wanted to give attendants a general idea of what the game would be like, what matters is that the entire demonstration, and that every single aspect of it collectively, were able to do so. That the tutorial segment alone doesn't do that does nothing to detract from the quality of the demonstration, and even then I'd say that it would certainly add to that intent to an extent; not only would it add to the participants' understanding of the combat system when testing out the main aspects of the gameplay, but it would also introduce the player to some of the basic, fundamental elements of the gameplay which usually acts as a basis for the gameplay throughout the entire MMO experience.

coughJRPGfanboycough