Guild Wars 2 Previews
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Ten Ton Hammer (Part One):
Arriving at the garrison, I and a few other ungrouped players found the doors wide open. This is never good standard operating procedure for a fort, and as a result we kicked off an event - a wave battle. My ranger finally came into his own now that I could put space between myself and my victims, but quirkily, enemies were immune to my attacks until inside the structure. Jon explained that this is so ranged DPS types couldn't just mow down approaching enemies, but I'm personally all about mowing down enemies in general!
In any case, I saw how projectile damage increased with proximity, encouraging ranged units to move around and find a sweet spot between too little damage and too much aggro. The second of my two starter abilities, rapid fire, had a simple but effective mechanic of allowing me some bonus rapid fire time if I simply held down the hotkey. That is, it sounds simple until you try to hold the number two button while WASDing around for better positioning, but happily the game automatically targets the enemy closest to your target reticule and switches targets mid-ability if you happen to kill your first target.
GamePro:
Professions and their respective abilities change on the fly without having to shell out money or experience points. So far, we know of only four professions -- but ArenaNet confirmed that there are eight in the final game. Each profession's abilities depend almost entirely on what the character has equipped. For example, while playing as a human elementalist, the demo driver changed from fire-aligned with area of effect ranged attack spells to water-aligned with healing spells with a single button click in the middle of a dynamic event boss fight. The char warrior character, meanwhile, changed entire lineups of attacks based on whether it had a bow or a sword-and-shield equipped.
You get a house, but it's not what you think. Rather than being a location to show off trophies, the residence each character is assigned (based on race and social status) provides the player a snapshot of their character's evolving personality in the form of neighbors that live near you. We didn't get to see this in action, but a developer said that if you were a selfish character, some of your neighbors might die and no longer be in the neighborhood next time you visited.
Massively:
The dye unlock system is account-wide, rather than character-specific, and it was at this point that I learned that account-wide features are going to be par for the course. "Everything is account-wide this time around. Achievements, titles, because we have this weird hybrid with half account and half character titles, and it really just didn't work this time around. It just makes more sense."
Once we finished checking out the dye system, it was off to some legacy sites. Our first trip was to the ruins of Temple of the Ages, something I've been anxious to see firsthand for a long time. Kormir got her own statue at some point, but unfortunately we missed its heyday. By the time Guild Wars 2 rolls around, poor Kormir is off-kilter and submerged. We paid visits to Grenth (also off-kilter and submerged), Melandru (partially submerged), and Dwayna. Our next visit took us to Serenity Temple, a familiar area patrolled at the moment by a lonely Ascalonian ghost.
Game Stooge:
The thing that differentiates this game from the first is the adventure is event driven rather than quest driven. Oh, yeah, there are still the (meet the guy and collect 5 of these) quests which make me scream but there are quests attached to locations. Let's say you're helping a farmer out. You may find that his farm comes under attack by bandits. This is totally independent of whatever you were helping him with originally.
These quests are not only tied to your location, but also your character's back story. When you create your character, you will have the option of filling in detail similar to the way you fill out your character in the Mass Effect games. The difference is these choices won't just affect dialog trees and plot, it will actually change which quests are available to you. This deeply increases the replay value.
And The Examiner:
Grouping issues are also addressed by making every class fairly self-sufficient, able to heal themselves from the brink of death and revive other players. You won't have to spend a half-hour waiting for that healer to show up so you can begin an adventure. You simply see an event a massive monster might show up and ravage a town, or an explosion in the distance might draw your attention and either jump in or not.
The difficulty of every dynamic encounter and the rewards for getting involved scale with the number of players. Monsters may even have new, more powerful attacks 'unlocked' as more players intervene.
