Guild Wars 2 finally starts to come to life

So, tomorrow ArenaNet is holding an open house, where they invited a few handfuls of GW fans that are active in the community to go out to Seattle, visit the offices, and play the game. Sadly I wasn't one of the ones chosen, but I am friends with several that are there right now and they're going to be letting me know stuff as they find out. Yay for twitter!

So of course, anything interesting I hear about, I'll post here 😊 Just one little snippet so far, but there'll be more tomorrow once people actually get to play and stuff:

"Day and night cycle is currently two hours. 1:20 of daylight and 40 of night. Possibly will change before release. -Colin"

Also supposedly there's going to be some big reveal connected with this, so yeah.

(and I do intend, if there's another of these, to make sure I'm one of the ones invited along 😄 I'm a dork like that)

Absolutely, positively the only MMO I've ever looked forward to like this. Actually, I haven't played an mmo hardcore since Warhammer, and I'm not going to be playing any until this comes out. At least waiting has gotten easier since I've put it on the back-burner.

Here's some stuff they found out about yesterday -

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/forum/showpost.php?p=766689&postcount=360

Originally posted by izari
Already asked Colin about this: they don't have any info on that yet. 🙁 Bummed, however I did let him know "from the fans" that the alliance feature was very popular and if it's possible to include it again, they should seriously consider keeping that.

Since it's Friday, What we did get to pick their brains about:

Dungeons are unlocked in storymode. Explorable mode opens "wings", effecitvely creating 32-ish dungeons / modes. They are also allegedly pretty challenging and will require communication and tactics from players (which is great news for everybody who's worried it's going to be "too casual"😉.

Underwater combat completely replaces the standard weapon / skillset to skills that make sense to use in that environment. For instance, ground-targeted skills would obviously not work in 50 feet of water.
Movement is key when underwater fighting too.

I'm not 100% if this is common knowledge, but I figure I'd repeat it anyway.

From what I gather, today we'll be doing: a dungeon run (Catacombs), preview of Winds of Change, and some voice acting (which should be shenanigans). Underwater combat is available.

Need to confirm if we're allowed to copy screenshots; I've got my fingers crossed on that one.

So excite!

I'm just going to be spamming the hell out of this thread all day, I think.

Here's some stuff from someone who attended the press day yesterday and is also attending the fan day today:

Underwater Combat: http://guildcast.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/guild-wars-2-day-one/
Dungeon: http://guildcast.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/guild-wars-2-the-catacombs/
Stuff from the studio tour: http://guildcast.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/guild-wars-2-anet-studio-tour/

Edit: PCGamer's article about stuff they did yesterday: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/24/guild-wars-2-has-complex-unique-underwater-combat-and-weve-played-it/

That catacombs dungeon intro is unbelievably awesome! 🙂

http://www.gamepro.com/article/previews/220745/nine-things-in-guild-wars-2-that-you-wont-see-in-other-mmos/

I'm totally going to have at least one character that goes for the "punch in the face" option.

Jeez, they should just take the other MMO's out behind the shed and put them out of their misery come launch day. This is crazy.

Haha 😛

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/06/27/flameseeker-chronicles-why-you-need-to-play-guild-wars-right-no/

I like that, a lot.

After watching some extended underwater combat for this game, I'm more psyched than ever for this game. You get an item that lets you breathe underwater, basically forever (as long as your health doesn't drop to zero). Man I'm pumped. Seeing a Drake brood mother swimming slowly and menacingly towards the character in the demo was just amazing.

I like how underwater, if you enter a downed state, instead of killing something, you have to swim to the surface, and enemies can try and drag you back down...

Also:

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/714063/feedback-supreme-court-games-ruling-and-shadows-of-the-damned-edition/

GW2 talk starts at about 27:45, and damn does he make a bold statement about it. One that I personally agree with, and that I've seen to be a common opinion amongst the community, but still...nice to see an actual media person saying that.

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/714117/guild-wars-2-preview-special-the-mmo-report/

All about GW2. Not a huge amount of news in there, other than confirming that the plot will heavily feature getting Destiny's Edge back together, but there is some awesome asuran animation around 8 minutes-ish (made me glad I decided my asura will be a warrior), and around 13:30-ish there's a glimpse of charr character creation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_otfOMDEfGg Awesome video.

Also, it was announced yesterday during the ArenaNet panel at SDCC that sylvari will be playable at Gamescom and PAX (and then presumably the London convention that the name of has escaped me), and sylvari week will be shortly before those.

...I was a little bit pleased at that info. I need to keep up my reputation as a sylvari expert!

Sylvari have been revealed!

http://www.arena.net/blog/kristen-perry-on-designing-and-redesigning-the-sylvari

I am...really in love with the new look. It's pretty much exactly what I wanted. Perfect blend of planty and fae and alien beauty.

So here's all of the sylvari stuff:

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-sylvari-soul
http://www.arena.net/blog/video-growing-the-sylvari
http://www.arena.net/blog/dream-and-nightmare (full of VERY cool lore info)
http://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/races/sylvari/ (official page updated with new info and a very nice new video)
http://www.talktyria.net/2011/08/11/sylvari-lore-interview-with-ree-soesbee-kristen-perry/

There's a few other interviews I've seen but they were all in another language, as well as a ton of blog posts speculating about what we've been given (I definitely got in on some of that myself).

http://www.arena.net/blog/jon-peters-on-the-new-gamescom-demo

Some stuff about what they've changed so far.

Blimey, it's a bit late in the day to drop the whole skill/energy mechanic!

I'm kind of iffy (so are a lot of people) about the whole "you learn weapon skills by using the weapon", though as they haven't yet really explained just how that's going to work, I think a lot of people are being really prematurely negative about it. I'm mostly just like "well, I'll reserve judgment, but this could be really bad or really neat".

On one hand, it could just wind up being kind of grindy - "I want to unlock skills for my sword...guess I have to go swing it. And swing the sword again." And if that's the case, then it could wind up unintentionally encouraging people to just stick with a couple of weapons, which rather goes against the whole "switching on the fly" thing. But on the other hand, it also makes more sense than simply going to a trainer and paying some gold for a skill.

I dunno, it depends on how they implement it. Some people act like they're going to make you grind the weapon skills all the way through to level 80 to be any good with it, and then you're stuck with just one weapon you can use. Other people (and I tend to agree with this view) think that you'll start out with a handful of skills for each weapon, and since you're supposed to switch frequently anyway, you'll be able to acquire new skills fairly quickly and evenly.

So yeah, quite curious as to how this will play out.

Well, who cares what sense it makes? Skill trainers are a facet of gameplay rather than logic and there's little mileage in trying to make a fantastical skill system more realistic. It had better not be grindy, anyway, seeing as repeatedly swinging a sword is precisely what Colin originally said was what they wanted to avoid.

But large amounts of the game would have had to have been re-tooled to account for the complete removal of energy from skills. That's huge.

Clarified by Eric:

"People will be able to experience this at the demo but I thought I'd come in here and clarify the skill learning issue. Learning weapon skills is not intended to be a long arduous process. It is supposed to be a short process that helps players learn their weapons more effectively. For example, you learn your second skill after killing ten foes which happens very quickly (usually before you exit the tutorial). The number required increases slightly as you learn skills but should never become grindy. Once you learn all the skills on a weapon you are done and don't have to keep using a weapon to "skill it up"."

Sweeeet. Yeah, people were definitely flipping out prematurely about it.