Guild Wars 2 Previews
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Kotaku:
The game asked me questions from my background (upper-class, well-to-do) to my biggest regret (never joining the circus). Each class also gets to select a defining personal item. In the Necromancer's case, it's a mask. Skull-faced mask in place, I entered the opening cinematic.
Guild Wars 2 features a strong focus on art, as evidenced by last year's release of a hardbound art book barely a month after the game's official reveal. The cinematic intro features the art of the game prominently, telling the story of the rise of the elder dragons and humanity's last stand. The cinematic then focuses on my character, regaling me with the tale of an upper-class lord dedicated to protecting the people who look up to him no matter the cost. In the final scene my character model stands tall against a concept art backdrop, ready to fight the good fight for the sake of the world.
G4:
(Instead of walls of text, you see smoke rising over the other side of a hill. You run to the top of the hill and you look down and there are a bunch of creatures fighting against villagers. Am I going to run down there and get engaged in this? I can, if I want. I don't have to. I can go off and adventure someplace else. But that's pretty compelling. So I'm choosing to go down there. I join with the forces there, and other players are joining in because we're all seeing the fire. We engage the creatures. We battle them off and force them back. This opens up new events and chains, and the dynamic event system all chains together, and you have different events that move back and forth based on outcomes that you as a player influence.)
The third pillar holding up Guild Wars 2's ambitious intentions is the combat system, which puts more of an emphasis on real-time action than traditional role of the dice schemes. Players can move, attack, dodge, cast spells, all on the fly. I didn't get a chance to try the game out for myself, but based on what I saw, the combat looks fast and fluid.
And Gladriel:
ArenaNet are breaking down traditional class structures as we know them with the implementations of an active combat system and a cross-class combo system which mixes up the roles. For example, a melee class can also use ranged weapons such as a bow and dish a lot of damage, depending on how many skill points have been assigned.
Players can determine how their character will look with armour upgrades and there are other factors that can affect the appearance of equipment such as the day and night cycle and even the presence of enemies.
